Cancer victory led me to join the priesthood

5:24pm Thursday 3rd July 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

FORMER Echo reporter, KATY WALFORD, gives a moving account of her mum's successful battle with breast cancer, which fuelled her ambitions to become a priest.

AS signs go it was probably one of the clearest she would ever get.

After six months of chemotherapy for breast cancer, the tumour just vanished.

It didn't shrink a little or improve. It just disappeared. The medical equivalent of a winning the lottery - or a bit of a miracle.

The fantastic news proved to be a real inspiration for Marion Walford. Her successful battle with cancer and years of work for the Church spurred her on to see if she could become a vicar.

Last Sunday, Marion, 54, of Ruskoi Road, Canvey, fulfilled her ambition as she was ordained at Chelmsford Cathedral.

Marion, now the Rev Marion Walford, said: "The Church has always been part of my life. I have always attended church, including Sunday school since I was three years old.

"Over the years, I have been junior church leader, PCC secretary - that's basically a church council secretary - and a parish warden, who's job it is to help the priest with the day-to-day running of a church."

Marion's ordination isn't really a shock to those who know her - or not so much as a shock as the news she was to have triplets in 1988.

She said: "My husband Terry has always said that's when he figured God had a sense of humour.

"We had been thinking it would be nice for our daughter Katy, then three years old, to have a little brother or sister.

"To find out I was expecting triplets was a massive shock. I'm the last person in the world who you'd ever think would have three at once. Having triplets before IVF was very rare. Clair, Luke and Sam were definitely one of Canvey's first ever triplets."

But while having four children might have been more than enough work for most people, Marion has always liked to be busy.

In the 1980s, she was a classic have-it-all woman, combining being a mum to a handful of tots with being the chairman of governors at a school, helping run the Second Canvey Island Girls' Brigade and working part time.

When her children were at school and college and many women start thinking about slowing down, Marion stepped up a gear, moving up the ranks at Futherwick Park School to take on her current role of business manager.

But beating breast cancer in 2001 was the trigger to start a search to see if God had something plan-ned for her, she says.

Marion was diagnosed with cancer in 2000 and went through six months of chemotherapy and a month of radiotherapy which involved daily treatment.

Despite losing her hair, the only time she took time off work was to go for chemotherapy sessions.

She even kept going to church, sitting upstairs on her own in the old choir seats because the doctors were worried about her low immune system.

After several months of chemo-therapy with little difference seemingly being made to the tumour, it vanished. Doctors were baffled and said the chances of that happening was probably less than the odds of winning the lottery.

After getting the all clear, and having had years of people telling her she should be a priest, Marion finally decided to follow her calling, and so the training began.

She revealed: "You don't just decide you want to be a priest. There is a discernment process. where people test your calling, to go through first.

"But once you're through this process, which can take years, the first part of the training begins.

"My husband Terry has taken a lead in ensuring family life continues, doing everything from cooking to shopping to running our children around, while still working full-time himself."

Now a fully qualified vicar, Marion will spend this year working as a deacon, effectively a trainee priest. Unusually, she will stay on Canvey, working as a priest at St Nicholas Church, in Long Road.

She said: "It is a place where I feel called to serve.

"I am delighted the Church has recognised this and not required me to move to a new area and take on a new parish. It is a privilege to work with the Rev David Tudor and the people of Canvey as I begin this stage of my ministry."