Lorna Byrne can't really see angels and talk to God... can she?...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/lorna-byr...

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23/05/2015 23:37

Lorna Byrne can't really see angels and talk to God... can she?...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/lorna-byr...

Lorna Byrne can't really see angels and talk to

God... can she?

Her ability to see heavenly apparitions that foretell the future has given
her wealth and millions of supporters around the world (though the
Catholic Church isn't so sure). But is Lorna Byrne's new self-help book a
mystic move too far?
PETER STANFORD

Saturday 23 May 2015

PRINT

Lorna Byrne is momentarily dazzled as she walks on stage at

London's Olympia. At first, I think it must be by the sheer scale
of this vast Victorian hall even her smart black heels, the
slightly built Byrne isnt much over 5ft. Or perhaps its the sight
of the adoring, standing room-only audience that has been
packing in for half-an-hour, waiting for her to emerge.
But, then, this 62-year-old Irish grandmother should have
become accustomed to big stages, big crowds and big welcomes
over the past seven years, as she has toured the world, talking
about her million-selling books on angels to crowds in
cathedrals, mosques, TV studios even at a UN climate-change
summit.
She is a bona-fide publishing phenomenon her first book,
2008's Angels in My Hair, has been translated into 30 languages
and chased by Hollywood studios, while its author is regarded
with such reverence by her devoted readers that some refer to
her as a modern-day mystic.
"There are so many angels in this place," Byrne announces with a
giggle, still glued to the spot on the Olympia stage, focal point of
a mind, body, spirit show that has taken over the exhibition hall.
"Even up in the balcony" she gasps. "There are hundreds and
thousands of angels here."
While we all peer round to check, and see nothing, Byrne's eyes

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23/05/2015 23:37

Lorna Byrne can't really see angels and talk to God... can she?...

have started to scan the rows. She can, she claims, see every
individual's guardian angel as "spirals of light", hovering three
paces behind the one they are protecting but only rarely do
they unfurl their wings for her.
"Oh, yes," she says, fixing on a particular point, "I can see a baby
there with its guardian angel, just behind, with lights [wings]
opened up, holding a golden sleeve around the baby."
Again our eyes swivel in a fruitless search, but no one seems
disappointed. Byrne is among kindred spirits, who choose to take
her at her word. Even when she tells us that the angels are
waving flags in anticipation of the arrival of Kate Middleton's
new baby apparently unaware that Princess Charlotte had
already arrived four hours earlier mine is the only eyebrow
raised.
At the end of her talk, a line quickly forms of those wanting a
one-to-one moment. Maria and Isabel are here from Mexico. Do
they think she's genuine? "It's natural to have angels around us
where we come from," Maria replies. "It's only here in Europe
that it sounds odd."
She regards Byrne as a welcome throwback to the wisdom of an
earlier age of Catholic piety. And, indeed, her descriptions of
angels chime with traditional depictions, all gold and light and
feathers. But for others, less conventionally religious but more
needy, she is an emotional prop.
At the back of the line is a tall, reedy teenager, with long blonde
hair, who stoops to engage Byrne in earnest conversation, then
breaks down into tears. She could be on the therapist's couch. At
the end of their exchange, Byrne hugs her, tracing a small cross
of blessing on her forehead.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/lorna-byr...

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Byrne is a bona-fide publishing phenomenon her first book, 2008's

Angels in My Hair, has been translated into 30 languages and chased by a
Hollywood studio (Benjamin McMahon)

What happened in that moment, I ask Byrne afterwards, over a

cup of tea. "I ask for a blessing for the person that whatever
they need, God will grant it for them. I'm blessing them but I am
saying the words that I am given by the angels."
Byrne's accent is unmistakably Irish, her delivery slow, and she
occasionally stumbles over her words. As a child the third of
eight from a poor family who grew up around Dublin she was
labelled "retarded" by her teachers on account of dyslexia, and

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Lorna Byrne can't really see angels and talk to God... can she?...

she came to reading and writing later than most.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/lorna-byr...

new 20 note

She can never remember a time when she couldn't see and speak
to angels. "It is normal k for me. I don't know what it is like for
you. I can't really imagine what the world would be like without
seeing the light coming from people."
Growing up, she learnt to keep quiet about such things. When,
aged 17, she met her husband, Joe, at her father's petrol station,
the angels told her that her intended wouldn't live into old age,
but she went ahead and married him anyway and didn't share
the revelation with him.
They made their home in Maynooth, 16 miles west of Dublin.
There was very little money but they had four children two
boys and two girls, today aged between 19 and 35 before Joe
died in his late forties in 2000 after a series of strokes. "At
different times," she reflects simply on her capacity to see what is
to come, "I am shown more than one future. We have free will
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At the time of Joe's death, she moved the family to a derelict

farmhouse in Kilkenny. "There was no running water and it was
like living in a tent, but my youngest daughter was grieving so
hard, the angels told me I had to leave Maynooth. [The
farmhouse] is where I am still.
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The decision to write about what she saw came from above.
From God, or from the angels? "Sometimes the angels and, on
occasions, God, but sparingly." She says it tentatively. "People
sometimes find that too much to take, but why should we be
afraid of the spiritual side?"
Perhaps because those claiming to be on a God-given mission
tend to unsettle us. Yet Byrne speaks of guardian angels in such
an unembarrassed, everyday way that she makes them seem
almost normal. However, even for the conventionally religious
and she remains a mass-going Catholic to hear someone claim
to hear the voice of God is to up the ante.
"To me," she reflects, "I'm just an ordinary person. I'd like
everyone else to be more important than me. I'm only the
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She is crystal-clear on her limits. All attempts to stretch her gift

further as some of those who wait patiently to see her often do
are quietly but firmly resisted. Behind her gentle, mumsy
exterior, I glimpse an inner toughness. "I am not a fortune-teller.
Young people come to me and say, 'Am I going to pass my
exams?' and I say, 'You know what you have to do: study.' You
can ask your guardian angel to help you, but you have to do your
work. They will encourage you but you have free will."
If her talk of angels comes with no promises of miracles or cures,
neither is it evangelical nor narrowly denominational. Last year,
on one of her regular tours of the US, she visited the Sufi Mosque

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Lorna Byrne can't really see angels and talk to God... can she?...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/lorna-byr...

in New York with the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Betty Williams
for a prayer event to promote unity among Sunni and Shi'a
Muslims.
What took her there was the key but very familiar message that
she conveys in all four of her books: that we need to love
ourselves and our neighbours more in order to make the world a
better place. "I'd hate to think," she says, referring to one of the
"futures" she has been shown, "that suddenly it would become
too late for mankind, that we'd wake up, see the disaster that had
happened and say, 'What have we done?'"

Byrne can't remember a time when she couldn't see and speak to angels.
'It is normal for me. I don't know what it is like for you. I can't really
imagine what the world would be like without seeing the light coming
from people.' (Benjamin McMahon)

And so the focus of her work is now shifting from, essentially,

telling her own story in Stairways to Heaven (2010) and A
Message of Hope from the Angels (2012), which followed Angels
in My Hair to the self-help market: Love from Heaven offers a
seven-day path "to love yourself more", complete with flash
cards.
It is the same invocation that can be heard on almost every other
stand in the mind, body, spirit exhibition around us, but what
seems to make Byrne fly above the crowd is her particular
combination of religion lite, self-empowerment and the
supernatural. And while it is all too easy to pick holes, what is
most intriguing is that, in an ostensibly ever-more secular,
sceptical and scientific age, this is something that so many want
to hear particularly the young, who are well represented in
Byrne's fan base.
"I'll be walking through an airport," she says, "and an
18-year-old will often come up to me and say, 'Thank you. You
gave me something to believe in, you gave me hope.'"
For her, her work is a public-service mission, but her books and

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Lorna Byrne can't really see angels and talk to God... can she?...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/lorna-byr...

tours have also made Byrne a wealthy woman. She has recently
set up a charitable foundation to distribute profits to children's
charities, including Unicef. "I don't have to worry about money
any more," she confirms, "but it hasn't gone to my head. I'm still
in the same house and it was only two years ago that I got the
outside replastered."
What do her children not to mention her three grandchildren
think about her travelling the globe, talking about seeing angels?
"They are really very supportive, but I think my youngest has
found it hardest because I have been away so much. Even now
she is at college doing law, she calls me about her driving test,
and tells me I have to be home to help her. 'Forget about
everyone else and think about me,' she says."
It is the sort of domestic detail that litters our conversation.
There is apparently no guile about Byrne either on stage or in
person. You take her and the claims she embodies as she is.
That leaves three possible conclusions: that she is an artful
charlatan, that she is just mad, or that she is on to something.
For me, there is no doubting her sincerity: she genuinely believes
that she sees and talks to angels. This is not a woman on the
make, nor is she keen on self-aggrandisement. Indeed, her air of
reluctance and lack of polish is part of her charm.
If she is mad, then she is as mad as anyone with a religious faith,
for what she sees and says is entirely mainstream in most of the
major creeds, even if nowadays they prefer not to talk about
angels as much as they once did. In her native Ireland, she
reports, the official Catholic Church is "a bit up and down" about
her, but individual priests invite her to speak "to fill up their
churches" and never find fault with the orthodoxy of her
message.
Which leaves the challenging thought that she may be on to
something. The notion of having a guardian angel watching over
us is, of course, wonderfully comforting, but for most it belongs
in childhood before a different reality takes over. What Byrne
does is translate it to the grown-up world. Believe me or don't is
her challenge, and it is curiously alluring. She doesn't worry
about those who don't, but many do along with the
accompanying promise that whatever troubles them need no
longer be borne alone.
'Love from Heaven' (7.99, Coronet) is out now

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