"Such sweet joy and consolation"

Easter Sunday morning 1991:  Ali with Richard McIlkenny

30 years ago, on Easter Sunday morning (31 March) 1991, Ali became a Catholic after a journey of faith that she described as "long and tortuous." 

When we arrived early at the Church of St John Payne, Greenstead, Colchester, Ali was feeling very nervous, but said afterwards that her nerves suddenly disappeared when she had the surprise and "overwhelming joy" of seeing someone she had not anticipated seeing on that day: Richard McIlkenny, who was  one of the "Birmingham Six,"  and spent more than 16 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of an IRA pub bombing that killed 21 people and injured 182. He and the other five wrongly imprisoned men, had had their convictions overturned and gained their freedom just two weeks earlier on 14 March 1991. 

Ali got to know Richard in 1987-88, after she wrote in response to a letter of his, published in a newspaper, in which he had said that while he was unjustly imprisoned, the injustice against him did not compare with the injustice against the unborn whose lives are taken by abortion. They then corresponded frequently and Ali met Richard several times in prison.  Ali had told him that she was being received into the Church that morning, but had no expectation whatsoever that he would turn up - an extraordinary act of generosity on his first Easter of freedom since 1974. 

Ali with Richard and friends Brian Collins (left) and Ray McGuinness

The next day Ali wrote about her reception into the Church on that Easter Sunday morning, when she was confirmed and made her First Holy Communion:

"The service itself I remember clearly, but I was in a kind of daze.  I recall being so near Jesus my prayers stopped using words and became simply a looking at and adoring of Jesus.

When I was confirmed I felt somehow that I was nothing but a soul (rather a devastating transformation for one who only a few years ago believed she had been conceived without a soul). I thought of it maybe like when [a priest] gives a blessing, but a blessing the touch of which is permanently imprinted upon one's soul, giving it a "character" which cannot be effaced....

Now I should go on to describe taking communion, but I find that just as I need words most they desert me! Maybe there are no words because it's beyond words, beyond feelings, maybe even beyond knowledge as such.  Sometimes thanks seem inadequate even for earthly gifts - how much more so for this ultimate gift.  As in Lourdes, maybe the closest I can get is to explain that I was no longer praying but rather I became a prayer....

I am a Catholic now; such sweet joy and consolation....."

Easter Sunday morning (4 April) 2021