Prelate and his brother-in-law gave finder a copper band as a thank-you
The B.C. Catholic
The soon-to-be retired Bishop of Kamloops was reunited with a missing cross through what some may call a miracle.
While at a shopping centre near the Diocese of Kamloops’s office building, a young man approached Bishop David Monroe. He was curious about the cross the bishop wore around his neck, telling him it looked familiar.
“He looked at me and said, ‘You know, I have a cross that’s identical to that one,'” Bishop Monroe recounted, adding, “My brother-in-law, who gave me the cross, only made two.”
The bishop had lost the first cross during a brutal assault by a mentally unstable man Oct. 22, 2010. “I told him the story of what happened, then I asked him where he had found it. By the Thompson River near the red bridge, he told me!”
The man who attacked the bishop had swum across the Thompson River after the incident, Bishop Monroe remembered reading in a newspaper. But the bishop refused to point fingers or lay blame, choosing instead to forgive and forget. “I always say no matter how it got to the Thompson River, I got my cross back,” he chuckled.
The finder of the cross agreed to return it, so Bishop Monroe and his brother-in-law gave him a copper band specially made as a thank-you.
“The fellow mentioned he had had (my cross) for a very long time,” said Bishop Monroe. “Five whole years!”
