Episodes

Ciaran Wright is forty-one, and a legionary of the Our Lady Queen of Peace Praesidium — the praesidium behind this podcast. He is not a priest, not a religious, and not a lifelong stalwart. He is the man in the pew: someone who came once, stayed away, and came back. He speaks warmly of what Frank Duff draws from St Louis de Montfort’s True Devotion in the Handbook — “very theologically insightful and enriching” — and of what the room itself gave him: “a chance to connect and listen to other like minded Catholics who are passionate and fervent about their faith.”

For the first time, the chair changes hands. Richard Harrington — the legionary whose own story filled Episode 02 — takes the host’s seat. The man who answered the questions is now the one asking them, and he asks them as someone who walked into the Legion at almost the same moment his guest did.

Every praesidium prays, week after week, for people who have drifted from the practice of their faith or are going through a hard time. For seven months Ciaran was one of the people being prayed for, and he did not know it. This is what that looks like from the inside — told by a man who now sits on the other side of the room, praying for the next one.

The 31st of July is the feast of St Ignatius of Loyola — a soldier laid low by a cannonball who rose a saint, founder of the Society of Jesus. To him the Church owes the motto Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam: “for the greater glory of God.” We could think of no truer day for this conversation.

Felipe Cunha is a Brazilian Catholic and co-founder of AMDG Core, who left Brazil to make his home in Belfast. In the third conversation he shares the story of his own faith: the road that carried him across an ocean, how he came to be devoted to the saint who made that motto his way of life, and the conviction that a life, a craft, and a day’s work are all meant to be offered back to God.

Richard Harrington is a Catholic publisher, writer, educator and legionary — a transplant from County Meath who has made his home in Belfast these past three years, a city he has grown to love more than home itself. A member of the Our Lady Queen of Apostles Praesidium, in the second conversation he shares the journey of his faith — the people, the providence, and the quiet daily fidelity that have shaped a life given to Christ through Mary.

The 31st of May is the feast the Church gives to the Visitation: Our Lady setting out in haste across the hill country to her cousin Elizabeth, carrying within her the unseen Christ. It is the first apostolic act of the Christian age — and the very pattern of the Legion. We could think of no truer day to begin.

For twenty years Fr Martin Graham has served as Spiritual Director of the Legion of Mary in Down and Connor, alongside his ministry as Administrator of St Peter’s Cathedral, Belfast. This summer he will be transferred to a new pastoral charge and the office will pass to a successor. Episode 01 is both an opening and a farewell — a record of two decades of formation, in his own voice, before the season ends.