This November completes my 80th year of life, and 61 years since I first became a member of the Communist Party of Ireland - a time for reflection, for stock-taking and for surveying. The fact that I was born four doors from the Dominican church on Cork's Pope's Quay sometimes raised eyebrows when foreign political comrades seemed to think of it as a link with the Vatican.

Indeed, as a schoolboy, I was a prefect in that church's oddly named Angelic Warfare Sodality, and I once read of a sermon made there by Canon Maguire, brother of John Francis Maguire MP and founder of the Cork Examiner.

It was delivered on March 23rd, 1872, after the setting up of the Cork section of the First International, led by Marx and Engels. He announced: "Today Cork stood disgraced before the Christian world, for the telegraph wires had already conveyed to every part of the world the news of our degradation. Our brother Irishmen in England, in America, in Australia, were made to blush on finding all that was respectable, religious, and order-loving in our Irish Catholic city had been overridden by these enemies of God and man and whose cry was `NO MASS, NO GOD'."

Despite my association with that church, however, in 1936-39, I was denounced from the pulpit for responding to a call by a republican deputy, Fernando Valera, who pro claimed on Madrid Radio: "Here in Madrid is the universal frontier that separates liberty and slavery. It is here in Madrid that two incompatible civilisations undertake their great struggle: love against hate, peace against war, fraternity of Christ against the tyranny of the church . . .

"This is Madrid. It is fighting for Spain, for humanity, for justice, and with the mantle of its blood, it shelters all human beings. Madrid! Mad rid!" Such words led me to fight for the republicans in the Spanish civil war. So it was hardly surprising that in 1951, when I was a candidate in the general election that year, that Dr John Charles McQuaid, the Archbishop of Dublin, declared it a mortal sin to vote for "Red O'Riordan".

People forget that there was more to that famous statement about religion being "the opium of the people", which is at the heart of the Marxist view of religion. Too often it has been misinterpreted to suggest that religion is simply a device to subdue and bamboozle people. Not so.

In the same passage, Marx writes of religion as "the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions". He was aware that religion was an "expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress".

To be self-critical: Marxists in Ireland have not always given recognition to this dimension. In specific historical circumstances, religion strives to meet important human needs, particularly in catering for the emotions and the imagination, even if it cannot get to the root of those needs.

In 1989, our Communist Party of Ireland journal, The Irish Socialist Review, published an analysis promoting a Christian-Marxist dialogue, in which we argued that this perspective should be taken more seriously by our party. We further noted that, for their part, many Christians - through liberation theology for instance - were beginning to learn from Marxism on how best to approach the crucial problems of history, society and politics.

We did say: "In expressing the distress of oppressed people, many Christians have gradually come to realise that they have also to set about alleviating that distress."

This means firstly understanding how society works and how change can be brought about. More and more Christians are adopting Marxist categories in their approach to those issues, and some would see Marx as "the last of the great Hebrew prophets".

Take the example of Father Ernes to Cardenal, his brother - another priest - and Miguel d'Escoto, who occupied the three posts of Ministers for Culture, Education and Foreign Policy in the revolutionary government of Nicaragua. There is also the inspiration of Archbishop Romero, who was murdered by a CIA gang in El Salvador, and many other priests in Latin America, such as the Christians for Socialism group in Chile.

These are mentioned in the context of the visit to Cuba at the end of January of Pope John Paul II, on the invitation of Fidel Castro. In this connection, I must mention the book Fidel and Religion which resulted from 23 hours conversation with Father Freio Betto, a Dominican priest from Brazil. The book was a best-seller throughout Latin America when it was published 10 years ago.

In answer to one of Father Betto's questions, Castro spoke of an earlier invitation to Pope John Paul II, when he visited a bishops' conference in Mexico in 1979. He related how "on going back to Rome [from Mexico] the Pope had to make a stopover. We asked him to stop over in Chile, but the Cuban-born emigres in Miami also asked him to stop over there. And in that situation the Pope decided not to stop over in either Havana or Miami; he went to the Baha mas, where there must be very few Catholics because, since it is a former British colony, the main religion there is probably Protestant."

Would it be a fantasy of mine to hope that when the Pope goes to Cuba he might issue a joint statement with Fidel which would endorse the long active work of Castro in agitating for a cancellation of the Third World debt? I hope they do.

I know such a statement would bring joy both to this Irish communist and to an Irish Catholic priest I have never met. Father Patrick Leonard, president of the World Mercy Fund, was written about in The Irish Times of October 20th. It was reported that "an Irish-based Third World charity, which raised £5 million for projects in the developing world last year, has condemned the `massive burden' of international debt faced by the poorest countries".

Father Leonard said debt ranks along with land-mines and the growth of infectious diseases as the greatest obstacle facing the Third World. Speaking at the publication of the World Mercy Fund's annual re port, he said it would only cost 1 per cent of global income to eradicate poverty worldwide.

Debt relief from the 20 countries worst affected by debt problems, he said, would cost between £3.1 billion and £5.6 billion, or less than the cost of ONE stealth bomber.

While they are at it, is it possible that another joint statement be is sued, one dealing with the US blockade of Cuba? As the British Labour MP Tony Benn has pointed out, "the blockade since 1961 was an act of war against the Cuban people. An ever-increasing number of governments are opposed to it and the US is facing increased isolation in the United Nations, with even Britain and other countries in the European Union opposing it.

"The blockade has caused death and suffering through lack of drugs and other essential supplies. Cuba has a higher literacy rate than the US itself. Cuba has still an infant mortality rate which is half that of Washington DC."

Michael O'Riordan, former general secretary of the Irish Communist Party, will be 80 tomorrow