Strawberry Letter: My Husband Is Secretly A Priest
Dear Steve and Shirley,
I recently found out that my husband is secretly a priest. I have known my husband for 8 years and we’ve been married for 5 years. I have a son from a previous marriage and we have a daughter together. During our dating period, I found a bag full of communion hosts at his house and that’s when my husband told me he used to be a priest.
I trusted him and did not ask many questions at the time. To date a man who was once was a minister was not an issue to me. Through the years, I saw letters addressed to “Father ___” or I’d get phone calls for “Father ___.” My husband has always dismissed these as just people who knew him when he was a priest. I eventually found out he was conducting an online relationship with a woman from his country of Ghana, Africa. While conducting one of those “female private eye” searches that Steve talks about, I found some documents and photos of him dressed as a priest and that made me question whether or not he had officially returned to the laymen community, which would make an ex-priest or nun free to marry.
I contacted the order he belonged to within the Catholic Church and found out that he was still officially a priest and when he went home to his country earlier this year; he performed priestly duties within his village. They showed me pictures and it was him. Basically my husband has been keeping our daughter and me a secret, while presenting himself in Africa as a priest. When I confronted him, he would not say one word. I do not know what to do. I am so torn and have so many emotions and thoughts running through my head. Church officials are urging me to stay with him, but how do you stay with a man who has committed this level of deception? I feel like I don’t know him and wonder what else he has lied about.
Give me your thoughts, please.
Thank you,
From a secret wife
Listen to Shirley Strawberry and Steve Harvey reponse to this letter:
