FR Aidan Larkin led a remarkably varied and fulfilled life.
As a young man, he played a leading role in the development of the SDLP and represented Mid Ulster in Stormont during the Sunningdale period.
As a barrister, he acted as a legal adviser to the Council of Ministers in Brussels.
And at the age of 35 he joined Clonliffe seminary and served as a priest in Dublin and South America, before returning to Ireland and writing books on St Columbanus and St Patrick.
Fr Aidan had many abilities. He was an accomplished scholar and linguist. He was a capable, thoughtful and inspiring politician. He could easily have built a career in law or as an official in the European Union or the Curia.
Yet while he had his health he pursued a path that saw him do none of these things but instead put his gifts at the service of the poor in a desert in Chile.
His life took so many turnings but was ultimately defined by his drive to know, love and serve God and his unwavering loyalty to the Church and its teaching.
Aidan was born in Lissan, near Cookstown, Co Tyrone in 1946. Both parents were principals of local primary schools.
From his father, a founder of the GAA in Derry, he inherited a love of Ireland, its language and history. From his mother, who taught him, a religious formation and loyalty to the Catholic Church.
He went to St Patrick’s College, Armagh where he played colllege football and on the Derry county minor team. He also captained the debating team and was deputy head prefect.
He joined his brothers Sean and Patrick in Maynooth but transferred to UCD where he graduated with a first class honours Masters in Ancient Classics. He then entered the Jesuit Novitiate in Emo.
He left again after a year, returned to Magherafelt, Co Derry (where his parents were then living), took up teaching and, having participated in civil rights marches including October 5 1968 in Derry, joined the newly formed SDLP.
Aidan founded a branch in the town and in 1972 won a seat on Magherafelt council. In 1973 he was also elected to the Stormont assembly which implemented the Sunningdale Agreement.
In a much-admired maiden speech, he said: "Our task is to bring trust to birth... and set ourselves free from the legacy of history."
Aidan also warned that if the assembly failed Northern Ireland would be condemned to "hatred, violence and death" and evoked Martin Luther King by concluding: "I too have a dream – an end to hatred... that we will move forward on a basis of mutual appreciation rather than mutual destruction."
Seeing the need to legislate for civil rights and equality, he studied law at Queen’s University and was called to the Bar, taking one of the first successful anti-discrimination cases.
Sunningdale fell in the wake of the Ulster Workers Council strike and continued IRA violence and Aidan narrowly failed to be elected to the Constitutional Convention in 1975.
As he had warned, politics entered a bleak period of drift and stalemate. He was appalled by the violence, and he felt powerless.
A committed European, his sights turned to Brussels. He was appointed to the Legal Service of the European Council in 1976 where he worked through French.
He participated in the Charismatic Renewal Movement under the guidance of Cardinal Suenens, an architect of the Vatican II reforms. Gradually the idea of priesthood returned.
In 1981 he joined the diocesan seminary in Dublin and was ordained in 1985. On that day he experienced, he often said, the joy of being a priest - a joy which never left him.
Fr Aidan spent five happy years in Corpus Christi parish, Drumcondra. He was then allowed to work in Chile with the Columban Fathers.
He mastered Spanish and spent six years ministering in a deprived area of Santiago and built a church, mainly with funds provided by his father.
Returning to Ireland, he was appointed chaplain to Trinity College Dublin where he enjoyed the company of students.
In 2002 he joined the Columbans, returned to Chile and spent four years ministering in Alto Hospicio, a shanty town in the desert populated largely by economic refugees from Peru.
With support from Irish Aid he established a day centre for vulnerable young people and drug addicts, and with funding from Greystones parish he built a church. He also organised the area's first secondary school.
In 2006 Fr Aidan was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and returned home to reside in the Columban Centre in Dalgan.
At the request of the Superior General he researched and wrote Saint Columbanus, Pilgrim for Christ, acknowledged as greatly increasing our understanding of the life and thought of the ‘Father of Christian Europe’.
Despite failing health he also prepared the book St Patrick and the Fathers of the Church. Its publication is foreseen in 2020.
His final months were difficult but he bore them stoically. He was exceptionally well cared for by the nursing staff in Dalgan and the community of Columbans.
Fr Aidan Larkin died aged 73 on March 31. He is survived by his brothers Frs Sean and Patrick, Colm and his sister Roisin.
