Donal Lamont
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Donal Lamont was an Irish-Rhodesian Catholic bishop.
Bishop Donal Lamont (1911-2003) was a Roman Catholic missionary to Africa who was most known for his fight against Apartheid in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
He was tried for giving medical aid to black antigovernment guerrillas and refusing to report their position. He plead guilty and was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. He served about 1 year of his sentence and then his Rhodesian citizenship was revoked and was deported, presumably to Ireland.
He had been a long-time critic of the racist policies of the Rhodesian government. Among his criticism, Lamont wrote an open letter to Ian D. Smith, the then Prime Minister of Rhodesia, saying "Far from your policies defending Christianity and Western civilization, as you claim, they mock the law of Christ and make Communism attractive to the African people." In other writings he declared Rhodesia's segregationist Constitution and unfair land-sharing to be "a direct contradiction of the New Testament's teaching"
Brief timeline:
1911: born in Ballycastle, County Antrim, Northern Ireland 1929: enrolled at Terenure College, in Dublin, and entered the Carmelite Order 1937: ordained as priest 1946: sent to Rhodesia 1957: appointed first bishop of Umtali (a region in Zimbabwe now known as Mutare) 1976: put on trial for aiding antigovernment guerrillas 1977: deported from Rhodesia 2003: died on August 14, in Dublin
Sources: Paul Lewis, Boston Globe, 2003
