Prayer vital part of daily life – Cecilia Ahern

Prayer is an important part of daily life according to best-selling author Cecelia Ahern.

Speaking on RTÉ’s The Meaning of Life with Gay Byrne, the 33-year-old author of PS I Love You and 10 other books said she prays to God every night.

Describing prayer as an honest conversation in which people “say the things that you feel, you hope, and you fear out loud”, she likened standard prayers to mantras, and said she always begins her prayer by making the sign of the cross.

She also insisted that to be human is to have a system of beliefs. “Even if you don’t believe, that’s a belief system,” she said.

Cross

She described the traditional sign of the cross as “like the beginning of a conversation,” adding, “it’s like dialling up”.

Explaining why she had had her then six-month-old daughter Robin baptised in 2010 at the same ceremony in which she married her then fiancé David Keoghan, Ms Ahern said that “I think faith is important and I wanted her to learn all about that”, knowing that Robin would “make her decision” in her own time.

Speculating that many people might have thought “Cecelia’s not into the Church thing, she doesn’t believe in the symbolism”, she exclaimed: “It’s not true! I believe in it so much I wanted it to be right.”