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Interview With Lorna Byrne


2012-12-22 | Tablet Column By Peter Stanford.

For the past few years, I have been writing a monthly column in the international Catholic weekly, the Tablet, on the ups and downs of bringing up my children as Catholics. It is reproduced here.

December 22, 2012

Compared to his relegation of the donkey and the ox from the manger scene, Pope Benedict’s downgrading of the angels there in his newly-published Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives is more a gentle tweaking of Christmas tradition. They were, he writes, speaking rather than singing when they proclaimed the news of Jesus’ birth to the shepherds.

Perhaps, though, the Pope is on to something when it comes to the need to think again about angels. For me, these celestial beings, so beloved of Renaissance artists, gravestone carvers and purveyors of greetings cards, have never been anything more than part of the backdrop to Christianity – although, with hindsight, I’ve had plenty of prompts over the years to reconsider. My mother – a wheelchair user for a quarter century because of multiple sclerosis – would glibly take daredevil risks with life and ill-functioning limbs because she was convinced she had a guardian angel watching over her. “Where was he – or she – when you got MS?” I can still hear myself protesting, before discarding her words.

Earlier this month, though, this habit of evasion and neglect was finally broken. I had agreed to conduct an on-stage interview in central London with Lorna Byrne. I’d first met Lorna back in 2007 when her book
Angels in My Hair was fast-becoming what every writer dreams of – a word-of-mouth best seller. In it, and two subsequent volumes, all of them now translated into many languages, she tells of how, for as long as she can remember growing up in poverty in Ireland, she has been able to see and converse with angels who watch over her. Each of us has a guardian angel, she believes, and then there are others – some under-employed – around and about, available to help us if only we will listen and let them.

I approached that first meeting – arranged so I could write a newspaper profile – with curiosity and a dash or two of cynicism. Yet, within minutes of sitting down with Lorna, I knew that this fifty something widow, with four children, was no charlatan. Everything about her bespoke honesty and integrity, in an endearingly modest, and compassionate way. And she was so wise about real life that I couldn’t airily dismiss her as otherworldly or – awful word – mad. So I began, almost in spite of myself, to take her claims seriously.

In the more recent on-stage interview, she started by telling the 800-strong audience that, in addition to seeing each of their guardian angels as a bright light in their shadow (though halfway through the evening one opened up to her and showed its wings), there were also other angels around and about the packed hall, speaking to her, showing her things that were hidden from the rest of us.

Instinctively I turned and followed her eyes and wanted to see too. That’s the logic of our age – we require proof to take anything seriously. If it’s not there, we just laugh. But there was nothing there. Instead I questioned Lorna about what she could see, and what it meant. Her message from and about the angels is essentially a straightforward one – that they offer us unconditional love and hope, on behalf of God, whatever our beliefs, or lack thereof.

Lorna was raised a Catholic and, although she had a bad experience at school where nuns labelled her “retarded” because of her dyslexia, she continues to be a regular at mass. She has even begun to give talks in churches in Ireland – and draws big crowds.

When we moved onto questions, we were faced by a sea of hands. Where I had tried to probe Lorna’s story in the manner of a latter-day Doubting Thomas, they had come to share with her and the angels their own tales of heartbreak – of losing loved ones, of caring for sick children, of still-births, of dreams they couldn’t explain, even of malign spirits (and Lorna is unafraid to talk of a real and terrifying Devil).

The most extraordinary aspect of the whole evening, however, came at the end. Lorna offered to give a blessing to anyone in the hall who wanted it – not on her own behalf (and she is clear that she is not a healer), but as a way of spreading the unconditional love the angels had shown her. For two hours I watched one of the most extraordinary spectacles I have ever witnessed as this tiny, outwardly unremarkable Irish woman made the sign of the cross on foreheads and hugged each and every person who came to her.

The queue spread all the way out of the hall and still they waited. Many, as they walked away afterwards, were in tears. Those that I spoke to couldn’t explain it. It went, they said, beyond words.

The convention of column-writing is for me now to finish with a neat, wordy explanation, but on this Christmas occasion I hope you will forgive me if I have none. Yet that scene in the hall will stay with me always.

The above article is reproduced with the kind permission of the publishers, The Tablet and first appeared in The Tablet on the 22nd December 2012.

See this article on Lorna Byrne's Website

Home Page of Lorna Byrne's Website


I have been giving copies of Angel's in My Hair to different friends. I find that many lives are transformed by merely reading this book! I tell the people to whom I have given the book, to not return it to me afterwards but pass it on to another person, giving them the same request. That is to pass the book on to another person if they have themselves benefitted from it. One of the amazing things about this book is that it can be given to ANYONE - Christians or non-Christians.



Version: 22nd October 2014

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