Caring for his ill wife brought Seamus Mallon closer to his Catholic faith.
The former politician said he was drawn closer to his faith after witnessing violence during the Troubles and through caring for his wife Gertrude.
Mrs Mallon had been ill for several years before her death in 2016.
The former Deputy First Minister helped care for her at their Markethill home after stepping away from frontline politics in 2005.
In his book Mr Mallon said that “my Catholic faith is something that I go to when I am in difficulty”.
“The priest called every month,” he told the Irish News.
“I did what I could and prayed as I could with her but we came to realise how essential it was.”
He revealed that he had always been a Mass goer but at times suffered from doubts and that he draws comfort from the communal aspect of worship.
“I suppose like everybody, I at times went through doubts,” he said.
“The one thing I always had, human instinct benefits from communal worship, whether it’s a Totem pole or a God or whatever.
“I never lost that - that need for communal worship, so I always went to Mass.
“Then experiences in life make you turn back towards the religious life.”
In the book Mr Mallon said that his faith is “very much part of the Catholicism of the north of Ireland and County Armagh” which was “defensive and beleaguered with many grievances”.
“So for historical reasons my Catholicism is politically orientated, not through any choice of mine, but because that was the way things were here and that’s what I grew up knowing,” he wrote.
