Praise be! It’s Meghan’s uncle, self-proclaimed bishop
( ...and he doesn’t have a single parishioner )
‘Leaves his church to get fast food’
SHE was baptised and married by the Archbishop of Canterbury. But if Justin Welby hadn’t been available, the Duchess of Sussex could have called on someone a little closer to home.
A newly unearthed photograph shows Meghan’s reclusive uncle Frederick Markle – brother of her estranged father Thomas – in the garb he favours as a selfproclaimed Catholic ‘bishop’.
The extravagant gold regalia is sported by her uncle in his role as head of a run-down church without even a single parishioner on the outskirts of Sanford, Florida.
The picture is believed to have been taken in the 1980s when his Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church had at least 40 members and Frederick preferred to go by the name of Bishop Dismas F Markle. Sources say the relationship between the Markle brothers is as fractured as the one Meghan has with her own father.
She isn’t believed to have seen her uncle since she was six and he rarely mentions her name, despite her marrying Prince Harry in May.
While his niece has a home at Kensington Palace and a bolthole in the Cotswolds, and recently holidayed with George Clooney and his family in Italy, Frederick Markle, 76, lives a rather hand to mouth existence.
His family home, a short drive out of the tourist mecca of Orlando, is a surrounded by a mountain of rubbish including broken bottles, discarded paintings and toys.
Nowadays it is mainly used by his adult son, Nicholas, while Frederick camps out at his church about 30 minutes outside the city.
Formerly called Our Lady Queen of the Peace Catholic church, Bishop Fast food: Frederick this month Markle has proclaimed it an outpost of the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church – even though it is closed to the public and hasn’t seen a single parishioner since the 1980s.
He is known by neighbours as a hermit who leaves the grounds of his church only to visit Nicholas and get fast food.
He is estranged from his wife, Theresa, and their other adult son David, who lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and children.
A spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Orlando had never heard of the church or Dismas Markle yesterday. Even Frederick and Thomas’s other brother, Michael Markle, who lives two hours away in Palm Bay, has no idea why his brother would be living in and running a church with no parishioners, while letting his home go to ruin.
‘My brother always was a hoarder,’ he told Mail Online. ‘I heard his house was going to be condemned, so it’s no surprise he’s living in the church. I don’t know where it is. Last time we spoke was before Christmas.’
Meghan, 37, and Harry, 33, are enjoying the last few days of their summer break before returning to public engagements next week.
The duchess has been deeply wounded by a series of vitriolic interviews given by her father, who pulled out of attending the royal wedding because of heart problems and the embarrassing fall-out from his decision to secretly collude with a paparazzi photographer in the run-up to the nuptials.
She has no plans, however, to fly to either the United States or Mexico, where he lives a reclusive life like his brother, to clear the air.
It is understood that the pair have gone for long periods without speaking previously and Meghan has made clear to all that the situation is a deeply personal one which she will work through privately and in her own time.