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I had been a church warden in the cathedral in Ennismore
Gardens and had been acquainted with Bishop Anthony for many
years. Our relationships were not very close. We met quite
frequently during instruction period before and after I was
received and then Bishop Anthony married us which is very
unusual and he also came to the reception after our wedding,
which is even less usual but afterwards our relationships were
more business-like. But there are two episodes which I would
like to relate because they are quite characteristic of him.
There were four bridesmaids at our wedding, all of them
wearing slippery dresses. At the reception Bishop Anthony sat
between my husband and one of the bridesmaids. She tried to
adjust her napkin but it was continuously falling because of her
slippery dress. Bishop Anthony searched in his pocket, produced
a large pin and offered it to her.
And then there was another episode in which the circumstances
do not really matter. It happened once that Bishop Anthony
behaved rather unconventionally and did something which was
really unjust. And he made sure that my husband Eddie and I knew
about it. We were puzzled and discussed the situation between
ourselves for quite a while. As we saw it, what he did was wrong
at least in two ways. But then we came to a conclusion that
because it was unjust and because he made sure that we know
about it, it must have contained a message for us. It was a way
of delivering a message which for some reason couldn’t have been
expressed in simple terms. And I think that was not the only
time when the Bishop behaved unconventionally in order to convey
a message which is either very hard to convey or very hard to
receive.
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