Anti-Gay “Sinister Monk” Arrested in Cambridge

From the Pink News:

Monk arrested for distributing homophobic leaflets is head of Catholic charity

A monk who was earlier this week arrested for distributing leaflets across Cambridge claiming that gay people are “corrupting young children”, is the director of a Catholic charity which spends tens of thousands of pounds each year.

…PinkNews has discovered that [Damon Jonah] Kelly, who is actually a monk, is the director of the Scotland based charity the Black Hermits.

The Pink News notes that the organisation exists to “promote Roman Catholic religion” and aims “to establish a Roman Catholic monastic centre on the Island of Mull.”

Details about Kelly follow earlier reports of a “sinister monk” distributing leaflets in Cambridge in April, and in Brighton, Market Harborough and Lincoln over the summer. As the Leicester Mercury reported in August:

One resident, who asked not to be named, said: “I saw the monk in Bath Street, followed by two angry people.”

There was also a rumour of an assistant:

A police spokeswoman said… one person who called in to complain said the monk appeared to be with another man, in normal clothing.

She said. “One was in his in late 30s. The other was dressed in a black monk’s outfit.

“Officers attended the area but could not find anyone…”

One recipient posted an image of one leaflet, entitled Homosexualism: A Few Points, to Twitter. This week’s arrest, however, appears to relate to a second publication, called The Works of DarknessThere’s also a third leaflet, a seasonable item titled Christmas, Christ and Anti-Christ. No publisher’s details are apparent, and all three have headings printed in a medievalizing font.

“The Black Hermits” are obscure – there are no details on-line other than official filings on charity and company websites, which show that the name was registered as a company in 2005. However, it should be noted that Kelly is just one of several directors, alongside a nun, a priest, and – rather unexpectedly – a local Mull grandee who was the sister of the late Pamela Harriman. It’s not clear why the Pink News describes him as the “head” of the charity, and there’s no reason to infer that his behaviour (which he’s admitted to) has anything to do with the organisation.

2 Responses

  1. On the contrary, Brother Damon’s behaviour has everything to do with the Corby Hermits who have a long association together and are currently living cosily as a trio thanks to the Bishop of Northampton Peter Doyle. The theory is that they are, like all RC orders, living in obedience to the Roman Catholic hierarchy. In practice, however, they seem to me to be off on their own little ultra-conservative trip – folie à trois you could call it – and this latest behaviour looks to me like part of them working through their psychological issues together. Sr Maryanne, or Sr Colette as she is nowadays known, doesn’t appear to have yet come to terms with the fact that her older brother John suffered from gender dysphoria and is now living and writing under the name of Jani Farrell-Roberts. Maybe Br Damon and Fr Stephen have similar issues, I don’t know. Unhappily for them they’ve been searching for many years now, unsuccessfully, for somewhere to be “hermits”.

    Now, if you look up the definition of the word hermit you’ll find something like “one that retires from society and lives in solitude especially for religious reasons : recluse”. The Isle of Mull would have been perfect for this but, for whatever reasons, they failed to get a toehold on Mull and it looks as though that project has been completely abandoned. The place they wanted to turn into a monastery; Kilninian, is surrounded by land belonging to the Comptons of Newby Hall, part of the Torloisk estate, which the would-be hermits could not access. So, after several years, they gave up and handed the building over to the Rumanian Orthodox Church in Scotland who obviously have more winning ways, as within a short space of time this group managed to obtain both land and planning permission.

    And so the three have ended up in Corby of all places and, far from retiring from the world appear to have started up political activism and agitation against gay and transgender people across Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire and even as far north as Lincolnshire. I found it very upsetting to read their leaflets even when, like me, you are heterosexually married in their prescribed manner, so I can’t imagine how frightening it must be for gay or transgender people who find this sort of stuff coming through their doors and realise that all their neighbours are being turned against them. It should come as no surprise that the Hermits’ activities have been noted approvingly on Stormfront’s website! I don’t see any Christian love or charity in it, only hate and spite. Is that really the sort of company that the Roman Catholic Church wish to encourage?

    Apart from the initial horrible leaflet which started me off to find out who these people were who were putting that nastiness through my letterbox, all this information was found by researching online.

  2. My brother got the updated version of this posted through his letterbox yesterday in Rugby. There are reports of a bearded guy in black robes, so he’s still at it!

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