To mark our anniversary, we have invited 50 Catholics to choose a person from the past 175 years whose life has been a personal inspiration to them and an example of their faith at its best At the age of six, John Main was sent from London to ­relatives in Kerry, Ireland, to recuperate from an illness. His playground was in sight of the ancient monastic settlement of Skellig Michael, eight miles out at sea. Later he was to become a Benedictine monk, and his life’s work focused on the same teaching of pure prayer (“the prayer of one word”) that linked the monks of the Egyptian desert to Skellig and the Western church.Main died in 1982 at the age of 56. He had worked as a journalist, soldier, diplomat and law ­professor before entering the monastic life. He was to