As Bono launched into another mini-sermon on faith, justice and love, Father Jack Heaslip did what he had always done for U2 — he stood out of the limelight and prayed.
On this day in 2001, Bono wasn’t standing at a microphone in a packed concert venue. He had slipped into a private gathering of staffers from Capitol Hill offices, a strategic circle of believers who shared his concerns about poverty, AIDS and oceans of Third World debt.
“God is watching. … Forget about the judgment of history. For those of you who are religious people, you have to think about the judgment of God,” said Bono. And don’t worry about “asking God to bless what you are doing. Look for what God is doing and get involved in that, because that has already been blessed.”
Terry MattinglyThat last saying, a Bono standard, was a quote from the Anglican priest standing in the back of the room. As always, the man who had been U2’s behind-the-scenes chaplain for decades declined to be interviewed, but quietly met with people at the edge of the crowd.
In liner notes accompanying its 2014 album, “Songs of Innocence,” the band called Heaslip “our North Star,” perhaps knowing that motor neuron disease would soon take his life at age 71. It was a rare glimpse of the man the U2 quartet knew as a guidance counselor and English teacher when they were boys at Dublin’s nondenominational Mount Temple Secondary School. In the book “U2 by U2,” Bono described him as “a source of inspiration and calm over our lives.”