My focus here is on just one decision, one decision among many, my mother made in her long life, namely her decision at age 95 to convert to the Roman Catholic Church.

Throughout her adult life, she had been a practising Christian. Whether she was living in Toronto, Gravenhurst, Orillia, London or, finally, Ottawa, she was a regular churchgoer. She had been a member (not simultaneously, of course) of Presbyterian, Christian and Missionary Alliance, and Anglican churches.

But in the last decade of her life, worship palled. Though my brother Graeme took her each Sunday to the Protestant church of her choice, she invariably came away complaining. She didn’t like it. The next Sunday she would be dressed again and ready to go, but always the lament afterwards: “There’s nothing there.”

In 2007 my brother converted to the Roman Catholic Church. My mother, whose upbringing was evangelical and intensely anti-Catholic, was not immediately told. When she was told, her response was: “Your father would turn over in his grave.” True enough, probably. Meanwhile, each Sunday Graeme continued to take her to “her” church. Then came the Sunday when she demanded to go to Graeme’s church.

As it happens, both my brother and I are late-life Catholic converts. To our shame, we tried to dissuade her. We worried that she might do something inappropriate or that old prejudices would be inflamed. But she insisted.

The first Sunday she attended at St. Patrick’s Basilica she observed and listened attentively. “I like it,” she said. The next Sunday Graeme tried to take her back to her Anglican church but no, she was adamant. She would attend St. Patrick’s.

In a few weeks she was saying “This is a wonderful church,” and a few weeks after that, “I want to join.” Again we thought it rather late in the day and tried to dissuade her, but she prevailed. Soon thereafter a priest came to the house and heard her first confession. Shortly after that she was received into full communion of Christ’s universal Church.

As long as she was physically able she regularly attended Mass at St. Patrick’s. When she could no longer leave the nursing home, priests came and brought her the sacraments, heard her confession, and at the end were there to anoint her. There may be a shortage of priests but somehow the work of the Church continues to get done.

My mother discovered, as all converts do, that the Church’s sacraments are effectual to their purpose; had she been able she would assuredly have echoed St. Augustine: “Late have I loved Thee, thou beauty ever old and ever new.”

My mother’s funeral Mass was celebrated at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Simcoe, Ont., on Nov. 18, 2011. The priest remarked that having been received at the age of 95, she may well have been the oldest convert in the Church’s recent history.

For 20 centuries, the barque of St. Peter has sailed the world’s dark, storm-tossed seas throwing out a lifeline to drowning souls. Some are hauled in from lives of atheism or agnosticism, others come from a dying Protestantism that no longer proclaims the good news of salvation. But from wherever they come, whatever their age and condition, the door is always open.

John Henry Newman converted in 1845 at age 44; Malcolm Muggeridge, the pre-eminent journalist of the last century, in 1979 at age 76; Margaret Elizabeth Hunter in 2007 age 95. R.I.P.

(Hunter is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Law at Western University — iahunter@sympatico.ca.)