A few days after John McDowell was elected Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and leader of the island’s Anglican community, the Covid pandemic forced the country into lockdown.
Much of his early tenure, therefore, was conducted online and there were numerous challenges; not least the restrictions on funerals when comforting the bereaved and the closure of church buildings.
But he took the leadership role in his stride, much as he has continued to do in the face of a changed 21st century society.
He’s spoken out about racism and integrating people of different cultures here, and about how we treat all minorities.
He’s led the way in cross-community relationships and speaks about victims telling him how they feel.
The archbishop talks about how religion is still important to many people here and how the Church remains relevant to civic society.
In six short years he’s led his own flock through the pandemic and the “joy of opening churches again”. Despite his senior position, he’s in close contact with the his grassroots.
A morning spent in his modest office in the shadow of Armagh’s St Patrick’s Cathedral re-affirms my previous experience of him as a quietly dignified and humble man of good humour; yet one who has a presence and is courageous.
According to Plato: “Wise men speak because they have something to say, fools because they have to say something.”
Since he was ordained 30 years ago this year, and particularly in his time as Primate, Archbishop McDowell’s style of leadership has shown the wisdom of knowing when to speak out.
“The Church is part of civic society and one of the voices of civic society. It’s not that we ever expect to have the last word; those days, if we ever had them, are gone now. We have something to say, but it has to be argued on its merits.”
He has from the front on a number of issues, in particular when calling out racism in Moygashel last year when an effigy of migrants in a boat was put on a bonfire.
The organisers denied it was racist, but he says: “I just thought it had to be called out because that’s exactly what it was.”
He thought of a quote from the Book of Leviticus about the way the people of Israel ought to treat strangers, because they were strangers in the land of Egypt and were badly treated.
The archbishop decided to speak out bluntly, admitting surprise that nobody else had done so, and he adds: “The Church has an obligation to welcome the stranger. It’s an unequivocal obligation. They’re in our midst, whether they’re going to stay there, whether they’re deported or whether they go home.
“I think the matter of migration, how we treat strangers, is a touchstone for the Church in the 21st century. I think it’s a vocation that we have and it’ll tell people things about us, what our values really are, what we are,” he says.
In addition to asylum seekers arriving today, the archbishop has taken the lead on integrating people from different nationalities who have made their home here over the years.
“By and large they’re not people who sit on their hands. They have energy and they have ideas. They’re not coming to create a migration problem, they’re coming because they want to do well for their families and they work very hard to do that. So they have a great deal to bring.”
He introduced a service last month at St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast to mark “Racial Justice Sunday” and set up a racial justice and inclusion group within the Church of Ireland.
Aimed at people from other parts of the world involved in ministry at various levels, he says: “We did a little survey to hear what their experiences were coming from a different ethnic background. Their experience was perpetual welcome but no integration.
“So, you’re very welcome, but nobody said ‘How can we include you?’”
He adds: “I think we can advocate for people from all sorts of minority groups, such as disabled people or people who feel nervous about their rights over Article 2 of the Windsor Framework.”
The archbishop has also continued to foster good relationships between the two more traditional communities.
He met the late Pope Francis on a couple of occasions, including an hour-long audience, describing him as “very talkative” and “a very congenial, convivial sort of person”.
By contrast, when attending the enthronement of the new pontiff last year, he found Pope Leo XIV very quiet.
“He could be a very still kind of presence. He definitely had a presence, the impression was that he was listening to what was being said,” was Archbishop McDowell’s view, although he admits to being very cautious about commenting on the internal affairs of another tradition.
In his short time with him, he personally invited Pope Leo XIV to Ireland.
And while he’s met the two popes, all the while he continues to forge cross-community links alongside his Catholic counterpart, Archbishop Eamon Martin.
Archbishop McDowell admits there are occasions when he comes under fire for his ecumenism, usually in anonymous emails or letters, but he speaks about two elements of the positive nature of relationships between the denominations: theology and community.
His recalls his background growing up in east Belfast in a mixed community, which goes some way to explaining early influences in forming relationships across the divide.
“Our relationships with other people, our attitudes to people different from ourselves, are very often formed very, very early in our lives.”
McDowell’s formative years were in a Housing Trust estate, which was about 70 or 80 per cent Protestant, but there was considerable rapprochement with Catholic neighbours and while not a “non-sectarian idyll”, there was a lot of contact, friendships were formed and impressions were created.
“I always say that when you’re very young the wax is soft and the impressions go very deep. It’s very difficult to shift them.
“That works both ways. If you’re in a family which has strongly sectarian views then that’s going to go very deep too.
“That’s when friendships begin and it’s very difficult to dislike people you have had an affection for.”
He adds: “I have always thought that integrated housing was more important than integrated education because that is when the outlook is formed.”
He describes his Church of Ireland mother and father as “very open-handed kind of people with a wise view of life”, saying his mother was “extremely devout with a strong respect for the sacrament of the altar”.
The young John McDowell’s closest friends were a Catholic family of 10 and he recalls attending Mass with them on a Saturday night, adding with a smile that “they had very good dances in the hall afterwards”.
The Mass was in the newly-built St Bernadette’s Church on the former Hillfoot Road, now the Knock dual carriageway, the first big post-Vatican II church – “a remarkable place” – and he remembers a community and Catholic family, saying “the only thing it evokes for me is very warm memories”.
The fact that the spiritual leader of the main Protestant denomination on the island of Ireland regularly attended Mass, in the early days Latin Mass, may come as a revelation to some, but it is only a part of his journey which adds to understanding of the theological differences and similarities between the two.
“The reason why the Church of Ireland communion service and the Catholic Mass are now very similar is because they both went back to original sources. There was a great movement in the 1960s, parish and people movement, and they had, in the years since the Reformation, discovered ancient liturgies.
“There was one called the Apostolic Constitutions of Hippolytus, a fourth century liturgy. Both the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion went back and looked at those and revised their communion services,” he explains.
While there are many discussions going on at higher and deeper levels between the world churches, Archbishop McDowell concedes that there aren’t many people interested in theological discussion in their everyday lives.
“I have always been involved in ecumenical endeavour and dialogue. So you have theological dialogue which is one strand. But you then have just ordinary community and civic relationships, and they’re probably more important,” he says.
The two Irish Primates are based in the same city, and Archbishops McDowell and Martin get on well personally.
There’s strong symbolism in their public appearances together, such as on the streets of Armagh on St Patrick’s Day or presenting cheques to organisations of behalf of charities.
He agrees that there is a good relationship: “Yes; I mean we’re not living in each other’s pockets in a sense, but I think we can be pretty honest with each other.”
He also finds relationships between the communities good. “I think people get on all right by and large.”
Although born in Belfast and having served in other parts of Northern Ireland, the clergyman has spent two significant spells on the border, as Bishop of Clogher in Fermanagh and Monaghan and now in Armagh.
“There are particular places around the border where there are memories and it’s a miracle of grace that it’s even as good as it is when you hear some stories,” he says.
“The conversation that’s going on at the moment about acknowledgement (of its role in the Troubles) by the government of the Republic, I think is very significant to them. I think it would mean a lot to them.
“Even with the best of intentions, if the government of the Republic felt they weren’t part of the problem, they can still be part of the healing,” says the Archbishop.
“What I found was that people who were victims didn’t want to talk about it every day of the week. But nor did they want it distorted or completely obliterated as though it never happened.
“The vast majority of victims don’t belong to a victims group. They’re just people who have had terrible experiences. They’ve worked out how to deal with it,” he says.
“The only time they get annoyed is when somebody misrepresents them.”
He also believes that surveys prove Ireland north and south remains significantly religious and recalls the challenges the Church faced during the pandemic.
There were discussions between Church representatives and civic authorities, but the Archbishop recalls: “There was probably no need for the harshness around a funeral. Six people to go to a funeral and to stand miles away. That was not a good decision.
“There were people within the Church who thought ‘This is going to be the end of us because we’re not allowed to come to church.’ What we discovered was that people realised that although they weren’t going to church but coming online, that the place needed to be sustained.”
So, they found ways of giving, and the Archbishop says: “I’ll never forget going round churches as they opened again and there was an unmistakeable, absolutely palpable sense of joy and relief to be back in the building.
“Those buildings turned out to be very important to them, and what went on in them. It turned out to be very important to people because it was where they experienced holiness in their life,” he says, and reveals that church attendance is now back to about 80 per cent of what it was pre-pandemic, including people who hadn’t been there before.
Throughout all the challenges that a Primate faces, Archbishop McDowell brings personality and a wealth of life experience to the task of leading and unifying people.
He turned 70 this year and he celebrated with his identical twin brother who returned home from Australia for the occasion. The two are the youngest of four, with a brother 12 years their senior and a sister 10 years older.
His twin brother has spent a lifetime in the aerospace industry and was managing director of British Aerospace in Australia and is still chairman of the Australian Atomic Energy Authority.
John McDowell worked with Shorts for a number of years and was a director with the CBI before leaving to go to Trinity College in Dublin in his late thirties. He was ordained at the age of 40.
He met his future wife, Mary, at Queen’s. As Mary Jackson, she was a professional actress who appeared in the groundbreaking “Billy” plays with Kenneth Branagh and James Ellis.
“I’ve heard it all, the actress said to the Bishop,” he jokes.
Mrs McDowell still teaches drama part-time in Enniskillen and their daughter Dorothy read English at Oxford and is now working for the Society of London Theatres with the ambition of becoming a theatre director.
Archbishop McDowell briefly also worked in the arts theatre years ago, and got to know James Ellis well; at Ellis’s request, he gave the address at his funeral.
“I’ve always known theatre people,” says McDowell.
Through his early inter-faith experiences and since, high-powered career in business, his theatre connections and attending rugby internationals when time permits, John McDowell cannot be accused of being a senior churchman lacking experience of real life.