Cardinal tells how guardian angel foiled intruder

The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Cardinal Desmond Connell, has disclosed that he was assisted by his guardian angel when an intruder entered his room in the early hours one morning last October.

He said so in an interview with the philosopher Dr Stephen Costello for The Irish Soul: In Dialogue, a book to be published next week. Dr Costello had asked whether every person had a guardian angel. The Cardinal replied: "That is the tradition of the church. There is a Feast of the Guardian Angels. They can be very, very helpful. One did a great job for me in October [2000] because a fellow came crashing through the window of my room at a quarter to two in the morning. I managed to escape."

Cardinal Connell was reluctant to discuss the event yesterday, but last night his communications office issued the following statement: "A man broke through the bedroom window of the Archbishop's [as he was then] house at 2.15 a.m. in October 2000. The archbishop woke and managed to get out of the room and locked the door. The garda∅ came and were very helpful.

"The archbishop asked that no charges be pressed in order that the man would instead seek rehabilitation. Then subsequently he met the archbishop some time later and spoke with him. The cardinal doesn't want to make any further comment to protect the privacy of people involved." In his interview with Dr Costello, Cardinal Connell said he believed everyone had a guardian angel. He explained the difference between guardian angels, archangels, and "ordinary" angels. "Angel means messenger, and the guardian angels are simply the pure spirits whom God sends to look after us. Every angel, precisely as an angel, is sent by God. The Archangel Gabriel is called an Archangel because he was sent with the most tremendous message [to Mary at the Annunciation]. Michael and Raphael are Archangels."

He explained it was a tradition of the church that there were fallen angels and that Satan had a legion of angels. Satan was a finite being "a creature like the rest of us . . . a person . . ." who "belongs to the realm of pure spirit," he said.

"No metaphysician would deny the goodness of Satan as he may have been; it's what he has made out of himself through his opposition to God, through his own choice. It's in that sense that he is evil. But everything insofar as it exists is good," he said.

Asked in the same book whether he believed in angels, the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Walton Empey, said: "Oh yes, I cannot see why not . . . We don't have to believe in wings and harps. It's only the artists who said that, not that type of angel! But I believe in angels as pure spirit." He believed in evil, but "I don't think it is personified. I think it is a pure spirit of evil."