Cathal BarryBroadcaster Chris Donoghue has paid tribute to religious nuns and brothers for the “comfort” they provided during difficult stages of his life.
The Newstalk Breakfast presenter spoke candidly on Brendan O’Connor’s Cutting Edge of the death of his mother at 14 and battling cancer at 23.
“You know what you expect somebody my age, who is a liberal journalist, to say about Catholicism and the organised Church but at two times in my life, when mum died and also when I was sick when I was 23, I had cancer, I got a lot of comfort from people of faith,” he said.
Friendships
Referring in particular to a Christian Brother who was his school’s principal at the time his mother died and the hospital chaplain nuns who comforted him while he was receiving treatment for cancer, Mr O’Donoghue said: “I always find great friendships with people of faith.”
“I don’t have their faith to the extent that they have and I hope I’m wrong because when something happens or when you’re sick or when someone you love is sick you will throw a prayer up there, no matter how much you have been saying ‘the Church this’, ‘the Church that’, you will have a go, saying ‘If you’re up there, I’m repenting, help us out here’.”