Obituary: Lawrence Henry - Archbishop who broke the rules

Former Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cape Town Lawrence Henry, who has died at the age of 79, provoked an outcry among South African Catholics when he gave Holy Communion to Nelson Mandela at a Mass in 1993.

1934-2014

Catholics felt that Henry had broken the rules because Mandela was not and had never been a member of the Roman Catholic Church.

He was sharply criticised again after being accused of covering up for one of his priests who committed paedophilia while a chaplain at Christian Brothers College in Cape Town in the 1990s, at a time when Henry was archbishop.

The priest, whom Henry knew personally, was convicted in 2005 of having indecently assaulted teenage boys.

Henry was aware of a complaint against the priest by a pupil of the school, but he did not report it to the police, as the church required. He received a tongue-lashing from the parishioners of a church to which the priest was subsequently posted for not blowing the whistle on him.

Henry apologised, saying that he had not known what he was required to do in such cases.

Henry was born at the Salvation Army maternity home in Cape Town on July 27 1934. He was orphaned at the age of three and brought up by his grandmother, who ensured that he had the best possible education.

By the time he matriculated first class at St Columba's in Athlone, he knew he wanted to be a priest. When apartheid laws prevented him studying at the Catholic seminary in Pretoria, he was sent to study at Propaganda College and Urbaniana University in Rome, where he was ordained in 1962.

On his return to South Africa, he was appointed an assistant priest at Holy Cross church in District Six. He was there when forced removals under the Group Areas Act occurred and the houses of his parishioners were flattened by bulldozers.

Years later, the scars that the bulldozers left on the street outside his church still moved him to tears.

After District Six, Henry was the parish priest in Lavistown on the Cape Flats when gangsterism was so rife that it was known as "kill-me-quick-town".

When priests of colour were excluded from an invitation to the premiere of the film Gandhi at the opening of a new "whites-only" cinema in Pinelands in the early 1980s, Henry wrote a letter of protest to the then Catholic archbishop of Cape Town, Cardinal Owen McCann.

When he was subsequently allowed admission to the cinema, he was so overwhelmed by its luxurious interior that when he reached his row he instinctively dropped to one knee in the aisle and genuflected. He hastily tried to cover up by pretending that he was tying a shoelace.

Henry was made auxiliary bishop of Cape Town in 1987 and appointed by Pope John Paul II as archbishop in 1990 following the death of the church's first archbishop of colour in Cape Town, Stephen Naidoo. He retired in December 2009.