Pierre Teilhard de Chardin owed to his mother, he said, 'le meilleur de moi-meme', the best part of himself. She used to walk two miles across the fields in France every day and back to early Mass.

Catholic theologian Karl Rahner when asked why he's a Christian: 'because my mother prayed for me'.

My (Rowland's) earliest memories are of my mother singing hymns as the sunbeams danced in the back room of our home in Mortdale, Sydney.