Lighting the Flame of Faith, Hope, and Love at St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral

This September, St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral will welcome three women whose faith in Christ has transformed their lives.

Martina Purdy was a BBC TV political correspondent for 15 years. She became household name in Northern Ireland in the wake of the Good Friday peace agreement, as she covered the country’s search for lasting political stability. Elaine Kelly was a leading Belfast barrister who built a 23-year legal career specialising in family law. In 2014, both women made headlines when, much to the surprise of their families, friends, and work colleagues, they gave everything up to enter a convent as Sisters of Adoration. Since then, the women have been on a remarkable, and quite unexpected, journey of faith, which has required of them a deep trust in God. Joining with the Irish singer Dana, whose life has also been shaped by her Catholic faith, the three women are on a mission to light the flame of faith, hope, and love, inspired by St Patrick. Ahead of their visit to the Cathedral in September, Martina shares their remarkable story with Crux.

It’s been twenty years since I last visited Scotland, but it all seems like a dream now, another life, another person, another story. Yet there is a certain symmetry in the story because Christ is there. Indeed the echoes of his divine life were unmistakable even then at St Andrews.

I was then the political correspondent for BBC Northern Ireland, and the Prime Minister Tony Blair was camped at the Scottish seaside with our politicians trying to break the political stalemate at Stormont. The Prime Minister’s official spokesman was busy denying the depths of the deadlock when he was interrupted by an unmistakable sound. “We are still in business,” declared Tom Kelly before the rooster began to crow….“Cockadooooodledoooooooo….”

The press pack erupted in laughter. “There’s two more to go!” protested Mr Kelly, mindful of the biblical reference to St Peter’s denial of Christ.

To the surprise of many, the St Andrews Agreement was forged - paving the way for an amazing conversion: power-sharing at Stormont between sworn enemies, Ian Paisley, the DUP firebrand, and Martin McGuinness, the IRA leader.

As for me, I was heading for my own transformation. Like the Northern Ireland peace process, it is a long story. But on Friday October 10, 2014, it was reported that I had left the BBC to join a convent in Belfast.

Although I had spent 20 years building a career as a journalist in Belfast, reporting the bad news, I had fallen in love with the Lord and “the Good News!” It was a big surprise, for me as well as everyone else! But then we have a God of surprises!

I had covered the multi-party talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement, published a book about the machinations at Stormont, and travelled to Downing Street and the White House to cover the peace process. It was a privilege to have a ringside seat as history unfolded, but I had found something better than being on television talking about politics: being at the feet of Jesus in silent adoration every day.

And so I left everything - and became a Sister of Adoration on the Falls Road Belfast, two doors down from where I used to wait to interview Martin McGuinness and the Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams. And I was not the only newcomer in the convent. Two other women had joined a few months ahead of me, one of them, Elaine Kelly, a barrister in Belfast. She had just quit the courtroom for the convent, after a supernatural encounter with Christ on March 9 2014. She had felt a strong touch on her heart, during adoration of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and she heard the words: “You will be a sister of adoration.”

If you had told me at St Andrews that I would one day walk away from the BBC to become a nun on the Falls Road, I would have laughed in your face. But I have come to know the power of God’s call and the words of an angel to Mary in the darkness of impossibility: “For God, nothing is impossible.”

Convent life was very simple, a call to silent adoration of Jesus’s real presence in the Blessed Sacrament. Our Congregation Adoration Réparatrice was founded in Paris in 1848 by Théodelindé Dubouche who is known now as Venerable Marie Thérèse. She was an accomplished portrait artist, painting the rich and famous in post-revolutionary France - until she realised their lives were vacuous and went deeper into her faith. She painted a vision of the Holy Face of Christ in his passion - and also was given a divine mission in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. She saw, not a monstrance, but Jesus on his throne, with a golden stream from his heart to hers, and she heard the words: “I want souls before me always to receive my life and communicate my life to others.”

Elaine and I marvelled that the Lord had called a journalist and a barrister, a writer and a woman of reason to communicate His life. Only God could call two professional talkers to a life of silence!

Our joy was palpable, as we made our first vows of poverty, chastity and obedience on September 23, 2017, the Feast of St Pio, at St Peter’s Catholic Church. There remains a wonderful picture of Elaine and me outside the Cathedral, ready for mission.

At the time, we were not aware that rules were being introduced by the Vatican, rules which would prevent us from finishing our nine year formation to final vows. The new rules effectively forced small congregations like ours to merge with other orders. There was some sense in what the Vatican was doing: many congregations like ours had fewer and fewer sisters capable of governing. Our fully professed sisters, some frail and elderly, felt compelled under obedience to Rome to release us. It was the beginning of the end of the congregation. All three of our convents, in Belfast, Wexford and Paris, are now closed.

We were given the news on the eve of Ash Wednesday 2019. Elaine and I say our lives flipped on Pancake Tuesday. All of us were sent into the chapel to pray. I was in a state of shock, but Elaine was more open to God’s will than I was. And in the silence of her heart, she heard two words: “Be amazed!”

I thought this meant we were going to get a miracle and be allowed to stay on. Instead we got a miracle in another form: Elaine and I were offered a house in Downpatrick, and conscious that the Lord sent them out in pairs, we decided to accept and begin again.

That was the autumn of 2019, and almost immediately a new man came into my life in a big way! St Patrick! This great saint had begun his mission in Downpatrick in 432AD - a mission that inspired countless saints, including St Colmcille who would set up a famous monastery in Iona.

Our mission with St Patrick began like most missions - with prayer. I did not want a job - I wanted a mission, so at Mass I begged St Patrick to find me one. And after Mass, a man from The Saint Patrick Centre in Downpatrick offered me a job writing press releases and promoting the centre. I was amazed.

I began to research St Patrick and read his Confessio online, his life in his own words. And he described how the Lord found him in the muck and the mire and raised him up and put him on a high wall, and he adds: “So be amazed all you people great and small!”

I shouted for Elaine. “St Patrick used the words you heard in the chapel!” We saw it as a sign that we were on the right path. Elaine and I then, together with the centre, developed a new camino St Patrick’s Way, a walk to seven holy sites in Downpatrick. We have led hundreds of pilgrims along ancient pilgrim routes!

The Lord has since led us back to the parish of St Michael the Archangel where we are part of the leadership team. And our mission has expanded. I now write a weekly column for The Irish Catholic, and Elaine is a prison chaplain for our diocese. And through St Patrick we now work with Dana Rosemary Scallon, who won Eurovision as a teenager in 1970 with the song All Kinds of Everything, and her husband, Damien, both committed Catholics.

Dana remains a popular singer-songwriter and was inspired by her late brother-in-law Fr Kevin Scallon to write a new song for St Patrick, called Light The Fire. It was launched on St Patrick’s Day 2023, and Dana and her husband subsequently founded the Light The Fire ministry, with our support. She has also debuted the song in St Patrick's Cathedral New York.

One of our first missions was at Slane in August, 2023, when more than 4,000 people gathered on the Irish hillside where St Patrick had lit the first Easter fire in 433AD in defiance of the High King of Tara. The Archbishop of Armagh, Eamon Martin, St Patrick’s successor, lit a symbolic flame, and there was mass, rosary, praise and worship and a healing service with Sr Briege McKenna. Another one is planned for Sunday August 3 this year. “Light the Fire is being called an ‘anthem for today’ and it has led to a movement," said Dana. “My hope is that this song and the movement it inspired, continues to light fires of faith, hope, and love in a world that needs it so badly."

Dana, together with her husband also wrote the famous Irish hymn, as well as Totus Tuus (Totally Yours) which she memorably performed for Pope John Paul II in front of 48,000 in New Orleans in 1987.

Come what may, we are on mission to rekindle that flame of faith, hope and love and, if you want to celebrate our faith, hear inspiring stories and song, and journey with joy in this Jubilee Year of Hope, join Dana, Damien, Elaine and me and many others at St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral in Edinburgh for a Light the Fire mission on 26 and 27 September. And “Be amazed!”

Join Martina, Elaine, and Dana on the evenings of 26 and 27 of September 2025 for Light the Fire: Stories of Faith, Hope, and Love. The event will include prayer and opportunity to hear the first-hand testimonies of the three women, with music from Dana.

This was first published in the Spring 2025 edition of Crux, the Friends of the Cathedral magazine. Crux is on sale in St Paul’s Bookshop.