Memorial United Methodist Church

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Father Michael Allan Lapsley SSM (born 2 June 1949) is a South African Anglican priest and social activist. He was born in New Zealand and in the early 1970s trained as an Anglican priest in Australia before coming to South Africa in 1973. Lapsley's visa was not renewed in 1976 due to his affiliations with the banned African National Congress and arrived in Lesotho on the 30 September 1976. He later moved to Harare in Zimbabwe. On 28 April 1990, Lapsley was the victim of a letter bomb sent to him by an operative of the Civil Cooperation Bureau which resulted in the loss of both hands and an eye. He had just returned from a speaking tour of Canada and a visit to Cuba. He started Friends of Cuba shortly after the bombing.

 

Lapsley worked for the Trauma Center for Victims of Violence and Torture in Cape Town 1998, which assisted the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He started the Institute for Healing of Memories in 1998. He was the subject of the biographical work Priest and Partisan: A South African journey (1996) by fellow South African priest and theologian Michael Worsnip.