Lawyers are generally not known for their spiritual virtues. Newly ordained Anglican priest, and long time lawyer, David Addington, will be confronted with this for the rest of his working life.

Father Addington will continue to work as litigation manager for the law firm of Mello, Jones and Martin. He will also work, without pay, as a priest licensed to St. Mary's in Warwick, with the full support of his law firm colleagues.

At St. Mary's he will work with his friend and colleague, parish priest Father Andrew Doughty who says: "He's always been a source of great help and support."

He was already a reader at St. Mary's when Father Doughty became priest there. Father Addington was later ordained a deacon and was secretary of the Anglican Synod in Bermuda for five years and is keenly aware of the needs of the church.

"It is a fact that more vocations are needed in Bermuda to simply provide the supply of priests needed in the parishes," says Father Addington.

This however did not influence his decision to enter the priesthood. He felt called to a sacramental ministry of baptism, marriage, confession, reconciliation and final rites, but decided to keep working as a lawyer. Combining priesthood and a secular profession in non-stipendiary ministry is rare in Bermuda, Father Michael Davis at St. Anne's trained in this way, but it is more and more common in England in the last ten or 20 years.

"If I'd become a priest at 24 or 25 I think I would have been much less effective than I would be at 55 with all the experience I've had of the world in the meantime," says Father Addington, "in particular when you consider a busy corporate litigation practice and that I started in criminal and family law."

Father Addington says his time "wandering in the wilderness" was part of his preparation. For a time in his late 20s and early 30s, and through a difficult time around a divorce, he did not attend church.

"It's very difficult to look for God's grace when you know you are not behaving as a very wonderful person. But we all have to remember that God came to save sinners and not the righteous, although we shouldn't knock the righteous for being righteous."

He started off on a more or less righteous path as a grocer's son growing up in North London, England. He was a chorister attending St. Andrew's Willesden Green church school. When he was 11, a Franciscan, Brother Martin, visited the school on a mission and suggested to the young Addington that he might have a vocation to the priesthood.

"I was certainly in my late teens and early 20s thinking in terms of the priesthood, but I found myself in a law office," says Father Addington. "My father had a serious heart condition and he died so I had to think in terms of earning a living."

He worked his way up to becoming a lawyer and is still actively involved in helping people in Bermuda with limited financial means, to work through to their law qualifications. Working his way through part time studies at St. John's Theological College, Nottingham, that eventually ended in priesthood, was therefore a familiar path for Father Addington.

"For me there was no blinding light on the road to Damascus because it was something that was always there," he says, mentioning family members with long time church involvement.

He started going to church again after he came to Bermuda to work at Appleby, Spurling & Kempe 26 years ago when exempted companies were creating a need for commercial litigation and arbitration. He also became involved with the Lawyer's Christian Fellowship.

Its motto is taken from Micah. "Your duty to God is to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God," quotes Father Addington and then adds, "which is a bit of a balancing act if you are a litigator but you can do it."

Other influences on his path to priesthood were working with the late Archdeacon Thomas Dyson when he was chaplain of the Bermuda Sailor's Home. Father Dyson married him a second time to Mary Ann and baptised their two children, Robert, 11, and Emily, 9. It was around the time of Emily's baptism that Father Addington thought seriously of giving more back to the church and started down the road that eventually led to him becoming a priest.

Years of praying and training led him to the packed St. Mary's Church last Epiphany Sunday for his ordination into the priesthood. Almost all of the Anglican priests of Bermuda laid hands on him and the Bishop Ewen Ratteray ordained him into the Anglican priesthood.

Brother Martin, now 77, came from England to preach the sermon and gave this definition: "A priest is he who draws aside the veil between God and the people of God, and hides himself in the veil."

After the service Father Addington said he felt exhilarated and very, very humbled. At the reception afterwards he mentioned his 85-year-old mother who would not brave an airplane for the first time in her life to be at the ordination.

"She will have sung all the hymns and read all the scriptures, several times already."

Near tears, he thanked all the people who helped him along the way - family members, clergy and all the people of St. Mary's, and indeed, everyone he saw in the church that memorable evening.