Derry singing sensation Dana reveals she once lost all belief in God

Ireland’s first Eurovision winner Dana said she was ‘delighted’ to sing Light the Flame at the Cardinal’s mass on May 14th, and also during the three day mission at St Patrick’s New York (May 15-17) with Sr Briege McKenna and Fr Pablo Escriva de Romani. But Dana admitted in a candid interview that she did not always believe in God, despite being a prominent Catholic and famously co-writing and recording the hymn, Our Lady of Knock.

Dana Rosemary Scallon recalled how she lost her faith as a young girl growing up in a Catholic family in Derry in the 1960s. “When I was 15, I just woke up one morning and I just knew with the conviction that a 15-year-old has that there isn’t any God and I had been lied to. And I just felt totally alone and isolated and I just absolutely knew there was no God!

“But I couldn’t even talk about it. And I continued going to mass because my mother would have killed me if I didn’t. So I continued going to church but it was a very hard year for me.”

Dana made the remarks in conversation with Ballymoney-based Martin Purnell, host of a weekly podcast, Off Grid Christianity, an Access Radio programme, designed not just for people of faith but those without. In a twist of fate, St Patrick himself wrote in his fifth century autobiography, Confessio, that he had no faith as a youth and only came to believe through prayer when he was kidnapped and trafficked as a slave to Ireland.

Dana recalled that her unbelief persisted until she was about 16 or 17 and had to participate in a three day silent retreat as part of her school year. “At the end of the three days, you would go to confession and I didn't want to go to confession and I didn’t want to be in the church, but you had to go. So I went into confession and the priest - I will never forget his name was Fr Hamill - I mean I just burst into tears and I couldn’t even talk.”

The priest arranged for Dana to speak to him afterwards and she explained to him how she felt. “I thought God was ‘escape’. I thought God was a big lump of putty in the sky that if you had a worry or a fear you would grab a bit of this ‘God putty’ and you would push it in the crack and you would keep going.

“But it didn’t remove the crack - it just filled the crack and it was an escape - and Fr Hamill said if what I thought was true, then to live the Christian life must be the easiest way, like rose-coloured glasses, but to live the Christian life would be the most challenging and most fulfilling road I would take. And, I remember thinking ‘oh I never thought about that!’

“It was like a big lightbulb, so when I came closer to going to Eurovision, I was beginning my own journey and my own walk in my relationship with God and it was often one step forward and five steps back.”

She also admitted to feeling ‘very fragile’ when she won Eurovision in 1970, aged 18, in Amsterdam with the now iconic song, All Kinds of Everything.

“Because I looked so young and everywhere I went I felt like (people) were patting me on my head like I was a child and it was frustrating for me and lonely for me because I missed my friends. And, I was thinking, ‘I am not a child’. I had already decided I was going to be a teacher and had applied for college and I didn't want to be a singer.

“And I thought, ‘they don’t know me. They treat me like a baby!’ But the ones who treated me normally were the Christians that I met.

“They weren’t all Catholic - in fact most of them were not - but they supported me and loved me where I was and didn’t push or pull me and so gradually I took it step by step in my relationship with God.”

Dana also recalled how her faith strengthened when another Christian prayed over her: “I was very blessed in a moment when someone prayed over me and the reality of God was so real that I felt that if I reached out my hand I would touch Him and I never lost that absolute sureness that there is a God.”

The challenge, she said, comes while waiting for prayers to be answered.

Light the Fire was premiered at The Saint Patrick Centre in Downpatrick on March 13th and Dana sang the song at St Eugene’s Cathedral in Derry on May 4th for the 150th anniversary of the Cathedral. Dana said she is ‘thrilled’ to be bringing the song - which she first began to write 12 years ago - to St Patrick’s New York.

“St Patrick’s Cathedral was built mostly with the pennies of poor Irish immigrants. For me, it is the greatest honour to be asked to sing Light the Fire in this Cathedral named after our Patron Saint. The Paschal fire of faith, hope and love, lit by St Patrick on the hill of Slane in 433AD, spread through Ireland and throughout the world.”

Dana said singing Light the Fire in St Patrick’s Cathedral New York was an amazing experience: “I am inspired and grateful to the true sons and daughters of St Patrick who carried that flame of faith throughout the world and inspired the building of the magnificent St Patrick’s Cathedral.”