An Escape from Tyrannies of the Past, by Andrea Nagel, The Times, April 7, 2008

An Escape from Tyrannies of the Past

By Andrea Nagel
The Times
April 7, 2008

http://www.thetimes.co.za/Entertainment/Article.aspx?id=741849

"When I started writing my book," says Mario d'Offizi, author of Bless Me Father, "I had no intention of writing the accusation into the story. It is not a confession, or an attempt to punish anyone. It is a kind of catharsis. There's still a wound, but now the pus has gone."

WRITTEN THERAPY: Mario dOffizi took his wifes advice and wrote a book about his traumatic youth. It turned out to be a therapeutic exercise

D'Offizi suffered sexual abuse throughout his childhood and as a teenager at the hands of Father Reginald Orsmond, founder of Boys Town in South Africa and later Bishop of Johannesburg.

Bless Me Father is the first public revelation of Father Orsmond's double life as social activist and sexual predator, but there is so much more to the book than a focus on these traumatic events. In this way, the book reflects d'Offizi's life; it is so much more than a collection of awful occurrences.

Mario d'Offizi is one of those rare individuals who has taken life's knocks, and there have been many, and turned them into achievements. Without having met the man you know, just from reading his book, that his outlook on life is a positive one.

D'Offizi's difficulties begin with his parents. His Italian father was sent to Abyssinia as one of Mussolini's Blackshirts during the Second World War. Captured as a prisoner of war, he was released as a free man into post-war South Africa, Bloemfontein where he met Mario's mother, a woman who was orphaned as a child in the Congo, grew up in the Langlaagte orphanage and lived, as an adult, with a succession of violent and abusive men.

Though both his parents were alive, d'Offizi (and his siblings) grew up in orphanages and institutions where he fell victim to violence and abuse that threatened to set him along the same path his parents had taken.

It becomes clear from his book that d'Offizi avoids this cycle of pain and unhappiness both by recognising the dangers of perpetuating it, and with the help of his wife Carla, who says: "Mario, you have to break this chain of divorce with its messy consequences for the children. Your children will never go into children's homes while we are together. Ever. You have to break this chain of pain and neglect and rejection. Think back to how you felt, and if there is any man in you, any compassion, any plain common sense, you will make it your business to break this chain."

Wherever I went there were reminders

D'Offizi has managed to escape the tyranny of his past. He is, in equal measures, kind, strong and adventurous, never shying away from an opportunity to experience something new.

He explains the catalyst for the writing of Bless Me Father: "I went to the Congo in 2006 with a conflict journalist to cover a story about what was happening to church leaders in that country. They were burning their pastors alive. "I met a number of pastors and orphans and the whole experience took me back to my time as a child. Wherever I went, there were reminders of what had happened to me, memories that I had spent a lifetime repressing."

On his return d'Offizi's doctor, who knew the terrible details of his childhood and adolescence advised him to seek therapy so that his early experiences could be brought into the open and dealt with. D'Offizi admits that it was also his association as a copywriter with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that made him decide to tell his story.

He says: "Truth hurts, but silence kills." He wrote the slogan "Truth, the Road to Reconciliation." The experience of working on the commission made D'Offizi realise he had survived, but the truth had remained hidden; he was not living an honest life.

These combined wake-up calls lead d'Offizi to Audio Psycho Therapy, in which music is used to stimulate and access repressed emotions. The music prescribed was Mozart, alternating with Gregorian chants.

D'Offizi says: "The therapy was amazing. I could smell the incense they used in the chapel where I was an alter boy. I recovered experiences and would write about it the next day. I wasn't talking to a psychologist; I was recovering my own internal experiences. I wrote the Congo part of the story straight away, and the rest was like taking a journey within a journey. The Congo was the definitive experience that kicked my ass into gear."

The resultant story is light-hearted, shocking, inspirational, poignant and optimistic, and one that any reader cannot help but be deeply touched by.

Zenzile Khoisan, Truth and Reconciliation Committee researcher says: "The book is a truly compelling read that reveals disturbing personal events, while showing that the human spirit is irrepressible."

# Bless Me Father is Mario d'Offizi's first book.