Here I am going to let you read certain of my books. I shall begin with Saint Anthony and then move to the fiction books. I am going to ask you to make a small contribution to each of the books shown, as explained below.

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Here are the opening pages (minus footnotes) to the book on St Anthony of Padua. The full book is owned by the Capuchins in Holy Trinity, Cork, but you can obtain a copy from the publisher, Orla Kelly in Cork.

 

This is the story of the early years in the life of one extraordinary young man from Lisbon in Portugal. He was christened Fernando but changed his name to Anthony at the age of 25. We have known him in the years since his death (13 June 1231) as St Anthony of Padua. While alive and as plain Anthony of Padua, his standing was already so significant as to be considered by some as “the second foundation stone of the [Franciscan Order, after St Francis himself]” .

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‘Forlì’ is the name of the provincial capital in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy and is located in the Po Valley. It is a medieval place and still today shows off its remarkable architectural history. At the time that Anthony, as he was known then, went to Forlì, the town was a walled city, well-defended with high surrounds constructed from that lovely biscuit-coloured stone so natural in the Italian landscape. The windows were small and dark, set in neat lines at the top of square towers below low-pitched roofs. The defences were strengthened by rounded bastions at each corner. More towers with even higher walls rose within. And of course there was also a church, the Basilica Abbey of Saint Mercurialis (San Mercuriale). Built in the Lombard-Romanesque style, the Basilica was and still is conspicuous for its very tall bell-tower.

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My story will stop on the night that Anthony went there although his story continued and has grown. Today, eight centuries after St Anthony’s life on earth, he has become one of the best-known and well-loved Saints in the Christian tradition. He is also a Doctor of the Church – a huge intellect and teacher able, even after his death, to relay the meaning of the compassion and mercy of Jesus Christ at the simplest level and with crystal clarity.

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I have chosen to write my story of Fernando / Anthony, as opposed to the world’s story of St Anthony, because I just do not think that enough has been said about those formative years: attention focuses understandably on what came after Forlì. And the reason I am so interested in those early years originates in a line in St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, that the saints are “simply God’s agents in bringing His children to the faith”[1]. It is the early part of St Anthony’s journey that deserves to be grasped as much as his adult importance – the question of how he got there.

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Once my interest in St Anthony had been aroused, I felt that I wanted to know more. I made a visit to Padua to see his tomb. I witnessed the arrival of his relics in Ireland on three occasions. I began to read, and so on. And then, quite unexpectedly, I found that St Anthony had done a job on me, very quietly and efficiently, as predicted by St Paul. He had brought me on my journey – and in return, I felt I needed to understand how he had been led on his.

 

Before continuing further, I need to explain my starting point. I never thought I would write a text in this general area of Faith, for that is what I am talking about. I was never particularly interested in Faith, as my boredom with a conventional and not particularly active upbringing in the Church of England confirms and my disrupted childhood made inevitable. I became a solitary, introverted youth as my family moved from place to place and country to country. Continuing success in my father’s career in one wide-reaching employment structure was always more important to our small family than wherever the next appointment had uprooted us from. (Not always for me, I now recognise with, still, a touch of self-pity.)

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But I did remember my occasional brushes with Roman Catholicism, which I found confusing yet distracting and sometimes even uplifting. On one occasion, we lived close to a Jesuit school, where I could see black cassocks, walking and organising. My father had an Irish, golfing friend who was also a priest but didn’t wear black, smelled of smoke and whiskey and liked questionable jokes. I loved being in France although I did not then know the word ‘secular’ and did not understand why the priests I observed smelled of garlic instead, looked grey and generally did not impress[2]. And then I first experienced deep calm and peace, alone, near Lochaber, Inverness-shire, beside a tiny, remote Catholic church not far from our home and begged my parents, uselessly, to leave me there, to go back and even to move on.

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I have to say that this general, adverse impression is in strong contrast with one picture in my mind of a Bishop of Chartres seated fully robed in the incense-swirling interior of his cathedral. All about him was noticeably dark on the day, although his throne seemed to shine with the light that Chartres is famous for. The Bishop was speaking quietly and intimately to a crowded congregation during Mass, a luminous scene, beside one huge pillar of limestone, that was mysterious, medieval and utterly memorable.

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