Reconciliation, Healing and Justice:

How to live out forgiveness in a broken world

A conference with

Fr. Michael Lapsley SSM

Director, Institute for Healing of Memories 

Saturday, November 19th, King’s University College

Father Michael Lapsley was born and raised in New Zealand. He went to South Africa in 1973 as a young Anglican priest determined to oppose the racism and oppression of apartheid. In 1976, at the insistence of the apartheid government, Father Lapsley was exiled from South Africa. For many years, while in exile, he served as a chaplain and spiritual advisor to the antiapartheid movement. In 1990, while living in Zimbabwe, he was sent a letter bomb from South Africa. He survived an immense explosion which was intended to kill him but, instead, he lost both hands, suffered shattered eardrums and lost one eye. With the fall of apartheid, Father Michael returned to South Africa and eventually became Chaplain of the Trauma Centre for Survivors of Violence and   Torture in Cape Town. In 1998 he became the founding director of the Institute for Healing of Memories, an organization which conducts healing and reconciliation workshops in South Africa and other conflict ridden societies worldwide. Nelson Mandela has said, "Michael's life represents a compelling metaphor: ...a foreigner who came to our country and was transformed...(His) life is part of the tapestry of the many long journeys and struggles of our people."