Archbishop Desmond Tutu paid a brief visit to Dublin this week to honour the Irish volunteers who build homes in South Africa with the Niall Mellon Trust. Patsy McGarrymeets a hero
Enthusiastic is a word that springs to mind on meeting Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Exuberant, extrovert, engaging are others. Enthusiastic, though, seems most appropriate. The Greek-based "enthusiasm" means "God within". Few clergy have had as positive an impact on our times as he has had. And not just in his native and beloved South Africa, where he played such a crucial and peaceful role in ridding that country of its apartheid regime. It was why he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, a decade before apartheid became history.
His achievements, and not least as a black man in white South Africa, are truly of consequence, but really on meeting him it is his personality that impresses most. There is, for instance, none of the self-regarding gravitas you can find where some international (and indeed national) figures are concerned. Instead there is a compelling, almost impish delight.
He was not quite himself, however, on a short visit to Dublin this week. Recovering from a bout of pneumonia, he had had something of a setback that morning and a visit from a doctor, but insisted on going ahead with the interview. For he had come to praise the Irish.
"Fantastic. I run out of superlatives," he says when considering the Irish contribution to his country's struggle against apartheid, and ongoing support during its difficult reconstruction. He is particularly appreciative when talking about the hundreds of Irish volunteers who go to South Africa at their own expense every year to help build homes in the townships - 5,000 this year - with the Niall Mellon Township Trust.
"You are a people who gave fantastic support to the anti-apartheid struggle and when we won you could so very easily have said 'now you're on your own'. Instead of which you have said 'we will walk with you that extra mile'."
Twenty volunteers who have worked with the Niall Mellon Trust were cited this week by Archbishop Tutu for their outstanding contribution to the project. They included the broadcaster Des Cahill, fund-raiser Maureen Kelly, Paddy McGuinness from Concern, Sean Fitzpatrick from Anglo Irish Bank and Gerry Nolan, a Roscommon developer.
He also speaks of the former Trinity College lecturer Kadar Asmal who, before he became Minister for Water in South Africa's new government, had been Professor of Human Rights Law at the Western Cape University. In that role Dr Asmal and his wife Louise have been "very instrumental" in recommendations for the truth and reconciliation process which had very significant influence in post-apartheid South Africa, the Archbishop says.
Desmond Tutu was chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa which reported in 1998, and is believed to have played a crucial role in ensuring peace there after apartheid.
As to whether there should be a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Northern Ireland, well it wasn't for an outsider like him to tell people there what to do, he says. But he quotes George Santayana: "Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it."
"You can't say, 'let bygones be bygones'. If you do not confront your past and look at it and then decide what to do, you can be sure as anything it will return to haunt you."
But his enthusiasm will not be dimmed. What has happened in Northern Ireland over recent months is "fantastic". It has been "wonderful seeing Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness sharing power", he says, although he asks, "why had we to wait so long for something that seemed so obvious from the beginning?"
Have his views on Pope Benedict changed since his last visit to Dublin, shortly after the new Pope was elected?
He appears every-so-slightly haunted when reminded he had said then that the jury was still out on Pope Benedict XVI. "We must live in hope," he said, admitting he was disappointed at the election of Benedict, who he described as a "rigid conservative" out of step with the times. Had he been a cardinal, "I would not have given him my vote."
But he acknowledged, then, too "some things the Pope has said since election would make one hopeful . . . and the Holy Spirit does do some extraordinary things. I have great faith in the Holy Spirit, who is in charge of the church after all."
He remembered criticising then Cardinal Ratzinger's description of other religions as "gravely deficient" and of reformed churches as "not churches in the proper sense". Archbishop Tutu said it was important that the new Pope was open to dialogue with other religions.
"We need church leaders who are open to inter-faith dialogue, who are aware that the truth is not encapsulated only in the Christian faith . . . God is not a Christian" and were he so "he would be a very small God. If God is Christian, what was he before Christianity? What was Moses? What about Mahatma Gandhi? God is in every single person. Muslims, Jews, Christians are all God's children. There is only one God and he is the God of all."
It appears, two years on, that the Tutu jury is still out where Pope Benedict is concerned. Reminded of what he had said about him, his cough suddenly worsens. "I am a sick man!" he pleads, taking a sip of Coke.
He is immediately better when asked about the current crisis in the Anglican church over homosexuality. Indeed he is positively animated as he expresses deep-felt exasperation at what is happening among his fellow Anglicans.
"It is very, very sad. In a world facing such very serious problems from poverty, HIV/Aids, corruption, conflict, a whole range of horrendous problems, what is the church of God doing? It is spending its time consumed over sexual orientation. I can only imagine that Christ's church is weeping." He wonders how an institution which could not keep quiet about any system of tyranny could do so when people are tyrannised for gender reasons or reasons of sexual orientation. "It is not about theology. It is a question of justice for me."
He cannot imagine the Lord of his church, who sided with the persecuted, being other than firmly on the side of people, of whatever orientation, who are faithful to their relationships. "Can you imagine anyone choosing to be gay? Choosing a lifestyle which exposes you to so much hatred and homophobia?" he asks, dismissing the claims of those who insist that homosexuality is just another lifestyle choice.
Then he has to leave, to meet the Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern. "But remember, I am here to talk about the volunteers," he says. "The headline must be about the work of the volunteers!" Reminded that headlines are for sub-editors to write, he replies, "Well, tell them that if the volunteers of the Niall Mellon Township Trust are not in the headline I will meet them at the pearly gates!
"You Irish are extraordinary in the sense of saying 'we remember our history of poverty, deprivation, unemployment, when many had to emigrate', even when you have become the European tiger. What you are saying is 'we remember what it is like to be at the bottom of the pile and we want to help others'," he says. "You may not think too much about this but it is important to be reminded about your extraordinary generosity when, having escaped the shackles of poverty, it could so easily have been different."