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"All roads lead to Fr. Hartley," said attorney Benjamin Chew. "He is the source of these reports." Though he is not named as a. defendant in the defamation lawsuit Chew's firm has brought against the makers of "The Price of Sugar," Fr. Christopher Hartley is central to the case made in that documentary.
It is ah unlikely starring role for this priest, whose father was a wealthy Englishman and whose mother is a Spanish aristocrat; His path to the sugar fields oMhe DorhN^h Republic is as unlikely as that to priesthood. During an extensive interview June 7 at a Carmelite Monastery in Brooklyn, N.Y. Hartley, who was returning the next day to Ethiopia, described himself as a theological and ecclesiastical conservative who ultimately found himself at odds. with church authorities and the sugar entrepreneurs because of his concern for the human rights of his parishioners.
His path to priesthood began as a 15year-old when, feeling a certain emptiness despite his privileged, life, He announced to his befuddled father, an Anglican, that he wanted to become a Catholic priest. It Was an announcement that his father would quickly refer to his mother, a Catholic. Hartley remembers the day clearly - March 8, 1974. He decided to attend seminary in Toledo, Spain, rather than in Madrid where he lived, because the former was more rigorous and disciplined and more to the liking of a fervent teenager who wanted to "devote my life radically to Christ."
The second year of seminary his father gave him a book about Mother Teresa of Calcutta as a Christmas gift. The book changed his life. He pegan to volunteer "every spare minute I had," first with 'iher Sisters of Charity in London, whete he met the famous nun In 1977. "And I when I met that woman, just looked at that woman, I said, I want to Work with her. I want to be with her,' " He helped the order open a house in Madrid and later worked summers in Calcutta with the dying. He was ordained in Rome in 1982 by Pope John Paul li
It was Mother Teresa who persuaded Hartley to go to New York, where he worked in...