“You are not safe here, John. You are going to be killed.”

John was born on June 14, 1921, in Skirwith, Cumberland, England. He was the son of Thomas William, who was an Anglican clergyman, and his wife Erica May. Him and his 2 brothers and 2 sisters were baptized in the Church of England.

He attended a private school and became a member of the school’s Officers’ Training Corps. He planned to continue his studies at a university, but with the outset of WWII, he volunteered for the Indian Army due to his mother’s family connections.

He was posted at British Malaya to face the invasion of the oncoming Japanese Army at the opening of the Pacific War. With the fall of Singapore, and after spending a month in the jungle, he was rescued by the Royal Navy and went on to serve in Burma.

After the war, he was deeply unsettled and relinquished his commission. Faith had become the dominant impulse in his life and therefore, upon his return, he stayed with the Benedictines and converted to Catholicism in 1947.

For the next 16 years, he wandered most of Europe and parts of the Middle East trying and failing to join various religious communities, but never finding a lasting home. He took a private vow to Our Lady never to wed and consecrated himself to a life of celibacy. On Good Friday of 1956, he joined the Secular Franciscans.

At the age of 41 he wrote to a Jesuit friend in Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe, and asked if there was a cave nearby where he could pray. The answer was an invitation to come be a missionary helper.

He traveled and worked at several missions in Rhodesia for 7 years before arriving at the Mutemwa Leprosy Settlement near Mutoko. It was a community abandoned by others with abysmal conditions. Regardless, he enlisted medical help from a nearby Catholic mission, and he devoted himself to the care of men and women who were suffering. He lived alongside them in a tin hut while washing, bandaging, and bathing them, as well as burying the dead.

He fell out with the Rhodesian Leprosy Association over their plans to reduce rations and badge the patients but continued his work.

The Zimbabwe War of Independence was underway and it pitted the white minority ruling government against African nationalist parties. As the war approached the leper colony, lay and Catholic aid workers and missionaries were killed by guerrillas. His friends urged him to leave but he refused as he couldn’t leave his “family” behind.

On the night of September 2, 1979, he was abducted while praying by rebels who’d been ordered not to touch him as he had been well known and loved by the community. Regardless, he was mocked and humiliated, but only responded with prayer. He was offered freedom if he abandoned the community but he refused and was shot in the back on September 5th. His body was left in the brush by a river for the locals to find.

For God’s Glory.