Cathedral visit inspired Donal’s mission for life

May 12 marks one year anniversary of brave teen’s death

The parents of Donal Walsh, the Kerry teenager who lost his brave battle with cancer last year, said a visit to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was a defining moment that led to his campaign for life.

In an interview on RTÉ’s Saturday Night Show last weekend, Donal’s parents said their son always had a strong faith but he came back from a family trip to Paris with a new sense of mission which led to his public appeal to young people not to end their lives by suicide.

“We went to Notre Dame with some cousins and we all went our own separate ways around the cathedral,” Donal’s mother Elma said. “The music started and it got very spiritual there at the time, and Donal was looking at a picture and he came back over to me and said ‘Mum, am I really, really going to die?

“I said, you know what the doctors said but they are not God at the end of the day and we hope you won’t. He came across then and said ‘Mum, It’s alright, I’m not worried. I really am not worried’.”

Calm

She said Donal came back from Paris in a different frame of mind. “He was quite calm and collected and never afraid of dying and never afraid of what the future would hold for him.

“He would have said his prayers before that and he would have been very spiritual, but that added to that and I don’t know why, I don’t what happened,” Elma said. “All the parties stopped and he got more in to himself and he took more out of what was in life after that.”

Coming up to the first anniversary of Donal’s death on May 12, his father Fionnbar has written a book about his son’s life Donal’s Mountain: How One Son Inspired a Nation.