The Former Fr. Prosper (Proper Name Leslie) Burrows Dies In Freeport

When you see this picture of Leslie Burrows and you saw him as  he moved about Freeport, you would not believe that the Freeport personality was the same man.  When he descended upon the students of St Augustine’s College in Nassau in 1968, 1969 or thereabouts, he was a cause celebre.  He was hired a religion teacher in a Catholic High School run by Benedictine monks.  He was a a monk. He certainly didn’t act like a priest or a monk. In his classroom, he would descend into deep silences leaning up against the blackboard while his students in their adolescent playfulness carried on, then he would shout out and startle his students into silence. He reminded you of that line from the  song by Paul Simon: “ When the radical priest come and get me released and we was all on the cover of Newsweek.” He was a radical priest.  He didn’t last long in the classroom or the priesthood.  He was one of that generation of Bahamian Catholic priests who all abandoned there vocation for the secular life although they remained Catholic. He went on to have a successful life in the secular world.  Being a Catholic priest was not for him, And yet as he passed away last week, the photos began to surface again: a Long Island man with an Afro, embracing his Black heritage in an island that rejects much of it.  He was a complex, soft spoken and kind man. He was deeply thoughtful and goes to his eternal reward well remembered. May he rest in peace.