DES Hanafin sees himself not as zealot but as radical crusader. He does not claim to be an intellectual - that is other, people's business. Instead, he is the general who went over the hill and lost the battle over the last great social issue in Ireland.
So, what does Des Hanafin do now the final offensive over divorce has ground to a halt in the Supreme Court? Surely he would not consider another referendum?
"You cannot start talking about another referendum just days after the Supreme Court gave its decision. I would fight it though, it is a fight for another day," he says.
His unrelenting hike through the often grisly anti abortion and anti divorce campaigns has left him exhausted but unrepentant. Despite a physical attack last month - "and a lot of ridicule" - he insists he is not the right wing, arch conservative his detractors would have us believe.
Now his ambitions turn towards Seanad Eireann where he held a seat for more than 20 years. He hopes to return in the next election. Many could be forgiven for thinking he is still a member of the Oireachtas, as he is frequently seen in its hallowed halls, turned out in those sharp, continental style suits he favours.
"He's still well got in the [Fianna Fail] party and was deemed to have conducted himself well during the divorce referendum on the anti side," one senior party member says.
Born in Tipperary 66 years ago, yes never got round to asking his father, John, why he had moved from his native Longford to Thurles. He assumes it was due to his father's republican "connections" in the area.
John Hanafin, "a very heavily committed nationalist", was an anti Treaty Sinn Fein urban councillor and certainly the greatest influence on his son's early life.
He owned a harness, and tackle works and, in hard times, was prosperous enough to send Des and some of his other children to Blackrock College in Dublin. After school, Des did "everything" a young man might wish to do. He went to London where he drove a milk van, worked in a bar and got to know something about life.
He returned to Thurles in the 1950s and before long began to make money, lots of it, from heavy machinery and the oil business. Since then he has been a millionaire "many a time".
His gift for creating wealth led the former Fianna Fail leader, Mr Jack Lynch, to ask him to become party fundraiser.
"He was the first of the solo fundraisers and he was good at it. He brought in funds from left, right and centre but be showed no interest in policy issues," a Fianna Fail source says.
"I have a flair for making money," Des Hanafin says. "But I have no control over money. I have always regarded poverty as a state of mind but being broke is a temporary situation."
There was no poverty of jocularity and merriment in his life, especially not in those earlier days when he drank like a fish, believing it was all under control. His wife, Mona, recalls how Des was "very happy with drink" and the couple chuckle at the memory of him coming home from Dublin to Thurles from Luke Kelly's wedding with the new bride and groom in tow, plus a busker they barely knew that had taken a lift from them to O'Connell Bridge.
Luke and his wife Deirdre stayed with the Hanafins for much of their honeymoon. Des and he decided to cut a single from a song called The Travelling People that Ewan McColl had written and given to Luke.
"Well, we set out for Dublin every day but we never got past Two Mile Borris. By the time we eventually made it to Dublin, the Johnsons had made the record," says Hanafin.
The Hanafins had two children, John and Mary, and were running their hotel, the Anner, but Des's drinking was getting worse - "I would drink anything as long as it was alcohol."
At the peak of their careers as hoteliers in the 1960s, they brought all the big groups, including balladeers like The Dubliners, to the Anner and hundreds would fill the ballroom. Good times were not to last.
Though they often had more money than most, the Hanafins had trouble in the shape of illness. Mona became extremely ill with cancer but as a consequence met Padre Pio at San Giovanni Rotondo - an event that changed her life, and that of her husband.
She is convinced the Italian priest who bore stigmata cured her and her work for the propagation of his name brought her an award from Rome - Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice.
Later, when Des's drinking got out of hand, she wrote to Padre Pio seeking help.
Some time later came Des's Pauline conversion. He was involved in a serious car accident, ending up in hospital with two broken legs. After the rigours of withdrawal from alcohol he beat the affliction and has not had a drink for 28 years.
He and his wife now live in Dublin. She takes pilgrims to San Giovanni twice a year while Des plans a book - a "kind of autobiography". The title he is considering has been suggested by journalist Sam Smyth: From Beer to Eternity.