Father Ralph de Bricassart is a fictional priest in The Thorn Birds, a 1977 best selling novel by Colleen McCullough, an Australian author. Set primarily on Drogheda, a fictional sheep station in the Australian outback, the story focuses on the Cleary family and spans the years 1920 to 1969. Actor Richard Chamberlain played Father Ralph in the 1983 television mini-series.
Father Ralph becomes the friend and later the lover of Meggie Cleary, the only daughter of the family, and fathers her son, though he remains in the priesthood, eventually rising to cardinal. He is described as being six feet and two inches tall, having perfect proportions, fine aristocratic features, loose black curls, blue eyes, and small and slender hands and feet, and a body that did not settle with age.
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