A Catholic priest today defended comments on his blog in which he offered sympathy to Jon Venables, saying he felt "immensely sorry" for him. The posting by Fr Blake, of St Mary Magdalen Church in Brighton, East Sussex, read: "Just to excite the wrath of our local paper, I feel immensely sorry for Venables, as well as Jamie Bulger and his poor mother.
"We are what we are. It must be horrendous for Venables to wake up every morning and see facing him in the mirror a hated child killer, carrying all the baggage of a corrupted childhood which lead up to murder, and the baggage which followed his conviction."
He added: "We are what we are, what our parents, our childhood, our experiences have made us, they are inescapable.
"We can run away from them into drink, drugs or hedonism of one sought (sic) or another.
"We can pretend to ourselves we are something other than we are, that we are better than other sinners, that our sins are not that important.
"The whole message of Christianity is that all sin needs the sacrifice of Christ's blood.
"That alone we can do little about changing ourselves, we are weak and ineffective.
"It is only when we recognise that, that we can begin to grasp that God alone can set us free."
He ends by asking people to say a prayer for all involved in James
Bulger's murder, adding: "May God heal them."
One parishioner reacted by commenting on the site that Venables "should never be let out of prison".
They added: "Keep Venables in until he rots. If he 'comes to Jesus' then God alone knows if he's really repentant or not. That's between him and God - God's call."
Told that his comments offering sorrow to Venables may place him in the minority, Fr Blake responded today: "Priests tend to be in a minority.
"I think Catholic priests tend to be in the business of compassion, compassion is about feeling with.
"Being able to place oneself in the position of people - that's at the heart of our faith, that's what Christ was about. He didn't come to condemn."
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