Franciscan recovering from attack asks for prayers for his assailant

You may remember this item from a few days back.

The priest who was attacked is recovering, and the Catholic Missourian has an update:

For his silver jubilee as a priest almost a decade ago, Franciscan Father Ed Mundwiller prayed for God to keep calling him beyond the boundaries of his own comfort zone, into places he never thought he would go.

“The old ‘normal’ and the old certainties go away, and God fills in the void with a call to justice and decency,” he said in a 2007 interview with The Catholic Missourian, newspaper of the Diocese of Jefferson City in central Missouri.

Father Mundwiller, who goes by “Friar Ed,” believes that is exactly what happened while he was walking in his St. Louis neighborhood the afternoon of Feb. 2.

He spoke briefly with a teenager and gave him a dollar. The teen followed him into an alley and attacked him, pummeling his face and breaking his leg while trying to get his billfold.

Friar Ed was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was treated and released pending surgery to mend a fractured bone.

“We all have our days,” he said in a Feb. 6 telephone interview. “Some days, we’re the hammer; some days, we’re the thumb.”

His doctor said he’ll probably need “a little hardware” in his knee and won’t be able to put weight on it for about three months.

Friar Ed, a native of Gasconade County in the Jefferson City Diocese, said this was the only time anything like this has happened to him in the 15 years he’s been part of the Franciscan community at St. Anthony of Padua Friary in South St. Louis.

“I guess it was a bad day for me, but not just for me,” he said. “I came into contact with a young man who needed some money. We all know young people who need some money.”

“As a repentant, I don’t think I’m better than anyone else,” he added.

As for the young man who attacked him:

“Please pray for him and everyone like him, the ones who for whatever reason fall through the cracks of our ministries and wind up feeling hopeless and invisible, those who need to have God’s mercy shown to them,” he said.