An appreciation

I LAST saw the cardinal in the Glasgow Archdiocesan Office a couple of hours before his first heart attack. It was so difficult to believe that he would be admitted to the Victoria Infirmary only a few hours later.

He seemed to have been well on the mend when he returned home on Friday. The news of his death is so stunning that it is difficult to find objectivity about the significance of his ministry on behalf of the Church. Yet a powerful clue was given to me by my old mother, who said to me before I was to become an auxiliary bishop to the cardinal that what she liked most about him was that he was a fighter.

Undoubtedly, this was the case. He challenged Prince Charles in the early 1980s regarding a remark that the prince had made about the marriage of one of his relatives to a Catholic.

Thomas Winning would continue to challenge all manner of people for the rest of his life, prime ministers not excluded, nor party leaders either. He challenged Margaret Thatcher over the Falklands War. He challenged Tony Blair over the alleged gagging of Labour MPs who supported pro-life causes. Perhaps most controversially of all, he challenged the Scottish Executive over the repeal of Section 28.

To his credit, along with the late Archbishop Warlock of Liverpool, he kept on track the papal visit to Great Britain in 1982, which had been threatened by the outbreak of the Falklands War, finding the formula to do so by inviting the Argentinian cardinals of the day to come to Rome that they might see that the visit of Pope John Paul II was purely of a pastoral nature.

The cardinal's energy for work was legendary as was his warmth and affection for people. At most functions he attended he was often virtually the last to leave. But all of that took its toll on him, even if this was to be unnoticed until the final week of his life, for he had enjoyed excellent health for many years.

Nor did be spend much time in recreation, except for an occasional walk by the sea and even more frequent visits to a well- known football stadium in the east end of Glasgow.

But there was an entire other dimension to his life that went unnoticed except to the people of Glasgow.

This was his work in relation to the spiritual renewal of the archdiocese in a pastoral plan that engaged a huge amount of his attention for the past 20 years. In his own eyes, this would have been his greatest achievement, not the attention that was given him by the press and other news media.

Since the retirement of Cardinal Gray in 1985, Thomas Winning was the president of the Scottish Bishops' Conference. His quick mind was ever anxious to build a common vision with the other bishops in developing national strategies regarding the social teaching of the church, in working for better ecumenical relationships and in a deeper implementation of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

No-one could match him for his ''common touch'' with people, for he was ever a man of the people, best seen when more than 1500 people from Scotland went to Rome for him and with him when he became a cardinal, an honour that he never thought would come his way. I have good reason to know this, since he had bought a new purple cassock only a couple of months before the announcement.

In due course, perhaps by the end of the year, he will be replaced. But in so many ways, he will he simply irreplaceable, even as his passing will he mourned by many thousands of people who felt privileged to be called his friends.