There have been many confessions by famous people about their relationship with God: Saint Augustine, Dante, Cardinal Manning and countless others who have tried to explain their journey between belief and doubt. But before asking how one relates to God, perhaps there is a more fundamental question: is there a God to relate to at all?

This is a question I have often asked myself…ever since I was baptised as a Roman Catholic in Saint Saviour’s church Lewisham.

Do I relate to God? Do I feel that there is a God? Do I recognise some presence beyond myself? The answer is that, in my own way, I do. I feel there is an enormous, powerful force, an incredible cosmic force, responsible for everything we see, everything we experience, everything we do, everything we love and everything we believe. It is something that extends beyond human understanding, something so vast that the human brain cannot truly comprehend it. Perhaps that is why we give it a name: God.

I remember my religious instruction lessons at Dulwich College. The teacher once said something which has stayed with me throughout my life:

“Before man was, God is.”

In those few words was contained the idea that God is not something created by humanity, but something that has always existed, beyond time itself.

Yet my relationship with God has always been separate from my relationship with human organisations that claim to represent Him. My experience of religion has been a long journey of uncertainty, misunderstanding, joy, discovery and, at times, complete despair.

It began when I was a very small child at Royston House School. I was about four years old when my mother told me not to attend the religious instruction classes. The reason was simple: we were not part of that faith. I remember thinking how strange this was. I was just another child. I was one of those children. Why should I not go into the classroom with the others? Why was I different?

At that age, I could not understand theology or religious divisions. All I understood was that there was something I was excluded from.

In 1955 my parents were moving house from Lewisham to Forest Hill and staying with my dad’s parents in Sydenham since the new-build house was not yet completed -Taylor Brothers the builders were delaying things. My parents decided that the best solution was to send one of their sons away (I had one brother) while everything was sorted out.

That son was me.

I was sent to Italy in 1956, when I was not yet eight years old, to stay with my grandparents

It was a decisive moment in my life, because my grandmother was a deeply religious woman. She came from a very devout family in Turin, and her own brother, Don Vittorio, had become a priest, as was once quite common for younger sons who dedicated themselves to serving God and the community.

My grandmother introduced me to Catholicism.

Every week she would take me by the hand and walk with me to the Salesian College of San Giovanni Bosco, where I attended catechism lessons. There was a wonderful nun, Suor Giuseppina, who taught me. I learned the lessons, memorised the facts, and eventually passed the examinations for my First Communion and Confirmation which was taken at the college’s church SanAgostino.

At that age, religion was something I accepted. Like any school subject, I learned what I was taught. But unlike a school subject, it also became connected with family, beauty and belonging.

I still remember my Confirmation photograph: a small, rather timid boy wearing long trousers for the first time, with the band on my arm. I remember the celebration afterwards, the presents, the little wind-up toy car with the little dog that popped out of its window and made barking noises. These things may seem small, but they were part of a world of ceremony and happiness.

I went with my grandmother to the church of San Camillo, a beautiful Art Nouveau church. The atmosphere was powerful and attractive. I believed in God, in Jesus Christ, in sin, in confession, in being one of God’s children. At that time, it was not something I questioned.

When I returned to England, however, things changed.

At Dulwich College, through my London County Council scholarship, I entered a very different world. It was a boys’ school, with its own traditions and its own approach to religion. Sometimes I avoided the morning assemblies, but on occasions I secretly went because I wanted to understand what they were about. I discovered the beauty of the hymns. I discovered that there was something moving in singing together about God, Christ and faith.

But religion was no longer something lived naturally in my family. I went to St William of York Church in Forest Hill, but usually alone. My parents would tell me to go, and I would cycle there with my brother almost as if I were carrying out a duty. It was something one did, like visiting a relative.

Then I met Peter Vaccari.

Peter was another boy from St William of York. His background was different from mine. His father was from Battipaglia and his mother from Austria. He lived in an old house on top of a hill, a house that was unfashionable at the time because everybody wanted modern new-built homes. Yet it was a wonderful house, full of character. He had a fantastic train set, and it was a place where imagination lived.

Peter became my friend.

But Peter also introduced me to another side of adolescence. We were approaching puberty, that difficult and confusing period when boys begin to discover independence and challenge boundaries. Peter had a rebellious streak, and his mother used to complain that he was giving her grey hairs.

Through Peter, I entered a world I had not known before. There was shoplifting — what we called “acquiring.” We took things from shops because, in those days, security was nothing like today. We took Slim Jim ties, Airfix kits and other things that attracted us. I remember hiding some of these things in the boiler house because I knew I could not explain to my parents where they had come from.

Later there was the stamp collection, which caused even more trouble. I was never prosecuted, but my mother became deeply worried about the influence Peter was having on me.

Yet Peter also opened doors to a wider world. We went to the cinema, and I discovered wonderful films, including Elmer Gantry, a masterpiece. We went to the youth club, where I discovered girls.

Until then, I had lived mostly in a world of boys. Dulwich College was a boys’ school, and boys’ schools develop their own culture. Suddenly, at the youth club, girls entered my life. Peter advised me not to wear short trousers anymore because girls liked boys in long trousers.

It was the era of Elvis Presley, of G.I. Blues, of popular music arriving through 45 rpm records. I was moving from childhood into adolescence. The world was becoming much larger.

And then I began questioning religion.

I thought: why am I going to church? My parents were not taking me. They were not sharing this experience with me. Why should I continue?

So I stopped going.

But my belief in God did not disappear.

What I began to reject was not God, but the form in which God was being presented to me. Catholic worship in those days was very different. The Mass was in Latin. There was a great deal of kneeling and very little participation from the congregation. The priest seemed distant, sometimes even frightening.

I remember one priest, a Lithuanian priest, who preached a long sermon about how shameful it was that our altar was not made of marble and gold but was only painted wood. Instead of bringing me closer to God, these things pushed me away.

I began to think: surely God is bigger than this. Surely the mystery of the universe cannot depend on Latin words, ceremonies and human authority.

So I began exploring.

I looked at other Christian traditions. I went secretly to a Baptist chapel in Peckham, which sadly no longer exists. There I found something different: a more personal faith, a direct relationship between the individual and God.

I remember a Baptist minister preaching about the extraordinary faith of people in Burma who, out of devotion, used their own hair to make ropes to ring the bells of their churches. Whether the story was literally true or not, the message was powerful: faith was something living, something belonging to the heart.

I attended the Sunday school there, secretly believing that I was rebelling against my parents. Yet in reality I was searching for something deeper.

The classes were conducted by a team of enticing girls in their beautiful billowing skirts, the fashion of the time. They represented another part of growing up: the discovery of attraction, beauty and human relationships.

Throughout all this, I continued to believe in God.

I even wrote down my own theological reflections and confessions. I sincerely believed that God was the creator and the central point of the whole universe.

But I could not accept a religion simply because it had been handed down to me. I wanted a faith that I could choose, understand and make my own.

My journey was not a journey away from God.

It was a journey towards understanding what God meant to me.

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