Michael Lapsley

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Michael Lapsley preaching at St Columba's United Reformed Church, Oxford, England, 2005

Father Michael Allan Lapsley SSM (born 2 June 1949) is an South African Anglican priest and social activist. He was born in New Zealand and in the early 1970s trained as an Anglican priest in Australia before coming to South Africa in 1973. Lapsley's visa was not renewed in 1976 due to his affiations with the banned African National Congress and arrived in Lesotho on the 30 September 1976. He later moved to Harare in Zimbabwe. On 28 April 1990, Lapsley received a letter bomb which resulted in the loss of both hands and an eye. He had just returned from a speaking tour of Canada and a visit to Cuba.

Lapsley worked for the Trauma Center for Victims of Violence and Torture in Cape Town 1998, which assisted the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He started the Institute for Healing of Memories in 1998. He was the subject of the biographical work Priest and Partisan: A South African journey (1996) by fellow South African priest and theologian Michael Worsnip.