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WYD-PRIDMORE Jul-2-2008 (440 words) xxxi
At WYD, ex-gangster plans to tell pope God's love changed his life
By Simon Caldwell
Catholic News Service
LONDON (CNS) -- An ex-gangster who once almost beat a man to death with a pair of knuckle-dusters said he's planning to tell Pope Benedict XVI how "God's love" inspired him to turn his back on a life of crime.
John Pridmore, 44, a former "enforcer" in the London gangland scene in the 1980s and '90s, will speak at the World Youth Day evening vigil Mass at Royal Randwick Racecourse in Sydney, Australia, July 19.
The pope will be there when the former criminal speaks for 10 minutes on how discovering God changed his life dramatically.
Pridmore told Catholic News Service July 1 in a telephone interview from Sydney that he considered the opportunity "an incredible honor."
"With the Holy Father being the voice of Christ on earth, it is a privilege to be at an event that he is attending let alone to be on the same platform that he will be speaking from," he said.
Pridmore was baptized and raised Catholic but fell into a life which revolved around stabbings, guns and major drug deals.
His journey back to the faith began when he beat up a rival gangster outside a nightclub in 1991 to impress his boss. Thinking that he had killed the man, he fled to Spain but was arrested when he later returned to England.
The victim survived and the case against Pridmore, which could have landed him with a 10-year jail sentence, later collapsed in court.
"I really thought I had killed him," said Pridmore, "but I really didn't care whether I had killed him or not and at that point I realized I was dead inside.
"I had the penthouse flat (apartment), the sports car and more money than I could spend but inside I was dead and it was that that led me to be open to the possibility that there could be something else," he said. "That was the initial reason I later went on retreat and finally went to confession," he said.
Pridmore later spent eight months working with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal in the Bronx section of New York.
He has since preached about "God's love" in parishes, schools, prisons and universities, so far reaching more than a million people.
"If somebody had told me about God's love when I was a kid I might not have made the same mistakes and caused the same pain as I did," he said.
Pridmore is the author of two books, "A Gangster's Guide to God," and his best-selling autobiography, "From Gangland to Promised Land."
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Copyright (c) 2008 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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