The troubles I've seen.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO JOHN HARPER, A CATHOLIC FROM BELFAST and former member of the Irish Republican Army, was a divided man, full of anger and shame--hiding, as he puts it, "from my own anxieties, my own fears." His life had been too tumultuous. In one short year, "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland claimed two in his family, and then there was the sudden death of his baby boy and his own part in an armed robbery in which a man was accidentally killed.

Fifteen years ago John Harper had become good at blaming others--the British Army, the government, anyone but himself. He had also become good at drinking. But there are moments of redemption that come in each person's life and his came quietly yet surely during a routine act of Confession.

"What is wrong with you is you haven't forgiven yourself," the priest said. "Forgive yourself, and get on with your life." The guilt that crippled Harper is gone now, he says, and he knows God had a hand in making it that way. Today the ex-combatant and ex-convict volunteers with Kairos Prison Ministry, helping to facilitate three-day Christian retreats for inmates.

The divisions of his former, war-torn life no longer seem to apply. He has attended prayer services held in Belfast's Protestant-only neighborhoods, gone into English prisons, and during one retreat found himself, after a moment of honest reckoning, giving a bear hug to an inmate who had been a British soldier.

"All the anger over the years, literally trying to kill people and stuff like that there only drags you down," he says. "Life's about trying to help other people, helping them to find God so they can have a better life, feel respect and love for themselves. It's not about trying to convert them. It's trying to make people feel their own worth."

As a young socialist, Harper thought he could save the world. But in the late '60s a war was brewing in his homeland, and he got caught up in the militancy of the day and joined the IRA. Popularly known as "the Troubles," the conflict in Northern Ireland over civil rights and British rule has lasted for more than 30 years, claimed more than 3,000 lives, and created deep divisions that remain to this day.

But in July 1991 Harper drove past a straggling procession of walkers on a three-day pilgrimage from the city of Derry to the Shrine of Our Lady of Knock. Their banner--Derry Cursillo March for Peace--intrigued him. He learned they were a Catholic group marching for peace.

Harper became a member of Cursillo and attended the closing Mass for the Derry-to-Knock peace walk the following year. It was there in a confessional that he unexpectedly found his life-changing moment of forgiveness.

A movement for Christian renewal originating in Spain, Cursillo centers around an intensive three-day course (cursillo) on faith. Participants are invited to spend the "Fourth Day"--the rest of their lives--living out their new perspective. From Cursillo sprung the interdenominational program Kairos. First established in the United States, Kairos leads prisoners in the three-day course and then offers them the chance to live for six to 12 months in small communities structured to support them on their new path.

"All prisoners are welcome," says Harper." We tell everyone it is a Christian program, that [the facilitators] believe in God but if they believe in some other god or any Supreme Being, fair enough."

AFTER VOLUNTEERING FOR 10 YEARS WITH KAIROS IN ENGLAND, Harper is now organizing to bring the program to his homeland, an admittedly difficult task in Northern Ireland where most Catholics and Protestants live highly segregated lives. But Harper believes it is important that "people of all Christian faiths go into the prisons together. We can go separately, but we don't want to. There is no use talking just about Catholic theology; the world is not like that. We have to make peace and understanding with Protestants to exist as a society."

A father of five and grandfather of four, Harper, a man tried by war, has become a thoughtful spokesperson for self-acceptance and tolerance. In his youth, he wanted to change the world. Today he is working to convert his whole "wee part" of it.

JOHN HARPER

RETREAT FACILITATOR, KAIROS PRISON MINISTRY

MY FAVORITE SCRIPTURE: The story of the Prodigal Son

MY FAVORITE SAINTS: Saint Patrick and Saint Anthony

I WOULD LOVE TO MEET: Gandhi

WHAT I TELL THE YOUNG PEOPLE OF NORTHERN IRELAND: To love the land of your birth but always remember God made it for all of us to enjoy.

MY GREATEST JOY IN LIFE: Is knowing that love exists in this world and that it grows stronger.

By CLAIRE SCHAEFFER-DUFFY, a member of the Saints Francis and Therese Catholic Worker. She writes from Worcester, Massachusetts.