I GREW up in Ballinsloe, Co Galway - the Maddens were one of the oldest families in the town - and I went to two secondary schools, two years in each, between 1959 and 1963. Until the Inter Cert, I went locally to Garbally Park and after that, having decided at 15 that I wanted to be a priest, I went to the SMA, the Society of African Missions in Ballinfad, which was a junior seminary.

I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed my time in both schools. Garbally was a real introduction to the liberal arts. In particular it instilled in me a great love of Latin and French.

The SMA was a most remarkable college. As well as academics, there was an enormous emphasis on personal development, quite unique in those times. It had to do with them preparing us for the African missions. What I mean is summed up in a few words delivered to us the Easter before we did the Leaving Cert by the dean of studies, Father Ben Dolan.

He called us together to remind us that the exam was far less important than our sense of who we were within ourselves. I was 17 at the time and that wisdom has stood to me ever since. It's given me a balance. Being comfortable with who and what you are is the vital thing.

There were only 140 students in Ballinfad and the entire staff were priests. They were wonderful and good men who knew about life because they'd been on the missions. Father Matt Gilmore, who was the land steward of the farm, was an example of the kind of person they were. He'd spent years in Africa and he taught us the rudiments of agricultural science with great good humour.

He filled me with a desire to go to Africa, but with none at all to be a farmer. He's now over 80 years and is a prison chaplin in Sierra Leone. He went back to Africa at an age others were thinking of leaving.

Interesting too was the fact that 30 per cent of students were from Northern Ireland - the major seminary was at Dromantine in Co Down. Because Irish was necessary to pass the Leaving Cert at the time and because I was a Galwayman with a good command of the language, I would be asked during study hours to take the northern students for a class. It was a great way of getting out of my own studies.

I passed the Leaving Cert and went into the priesthood, as far as the junior seminary in Kilcolgan anyway. I spent a year there and then became ill and didn't go back. I've often regretted it but it all had to do with the example of those good men. Ballinfad was the most wholesome experience of my life and all my memories are happy memories.