Robert W. Castle Jr., Episcopal Priest Who Turned Anger Into Activism, Dies at 83

From The New York Times-

The Rev. Robert W. Castle Jr., an outspoken Episcopal priest in Harlem who was the subject of Jonathan Demme’s acclaimed 1992 documentary, “Cousin Bobby” — and who went on to a film acting career as a result — died on Oct. 27 at his home in Holland, Vt. He was 83.

The death, of natural causes, was confirmed by his family.

Father Castle, who really was Mr. Demme’s cousin, was the rector of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, a largely black and Hispanic congregation on West 126th Street, near Broadway, from 1987 until his retirement in 2000.

There, he ran an energetic ministry in which spirituality and social action were indissolubly linked, relishing his role as “an obdurate whirligig fulminating against the establishment,” as N. R. Kleinfield wrote in The New York Times in 1996.

Mr. Demme, the Oscar-winning director of “The Silence of the Lambs” and other feature films, had been out of touch with his cousin for decades. In the late 1980s, he read a newspaper article describing Father Castle’s practice of plastering irate notices on the windshields of cars that were parked illegally on the church sidewalk, blocking congregants’ access.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/07/nyregion/robert-w-castle-jr-outspoken-harlem-priest-dies-at-83.html?_r=0