My mother and father came from Wicklow. They had nine children. I was number nine. Two of us became priests. One became a nun. And one did five years training for the priesthood and decided it wasn’t for him.

I wanted to be a priest from childhood. When I got into the sixth form, the war was on, so I had to go into the Army. Then I went to Oxford on a scholarship. I tried to put my vocation on the shelf – I was enjoying myself too much – but, finally, I had to face the question of what came next. And a little insistent voice within me said: “You know perfectly well what you’ve got to do.”