Twenty years ago, Archbishop Terence Finlay, then Archbishop of Toronto revoked the license of the Rev. James Ferry because Ferry had fallen in love with the man who would become his lifelong partner. Next Sunday, they will participate in a rare service of reconciliation. Love changes lives, and changes minds.
The Toronto Star as the story:
For both Finlay and Ferry, the pat two decades have brought pain, anguish and humiliation. Ferry paid immediately and publicly. For 20 years, he felt cast out for the crime of “loving another human being deeply and intimately.”
He had to find another way to make a living, and now works as a rights adviser to psychiatric patients at area hospitals.
He had to learn to let go of roiling emotions. “One of the things that one has to do is to learn how to let go of pain,” he says. “Not to fixate on events of the past and let them take over your life.”
Terence Finlay apparently paid in the more private coin of a tormented soul.