Although it is 25 years since Mgr Denis Faul intervened in the H-Block hunger strikes, he has lost none of his passion for justice. As he battles with cancer he tells Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor, why 'banished' exiles should now be urged to return

Monsignor Denis Faul has lost some of his slight portliness. In fact, he's dropped about two-and-a-half stone (16 kilos) in weight. In October he was rushed to Omagh hospital from his parochial house in Carrickmore, Co Tyrone and transferred the following day to Enniskillen.

He had a burst appendix, unusual these days, but caused by the growth of a three-year-old undiagnosed cancerous tumour.

He should have had more regular check-ups, he knows. Too busy. Not sensible for a priest who comes from a family of doctors, whose father was the GP in his native Co Louth; yet not surprising knowing the man. His voice, never loud, isn't as strong as before, but the harnessed passion, fixed moral compass and rigorous intellect remain.

He's 73 now; this is his golden jubilee year as a priest out of Maynooth. Somehow you expect to find that he is older. It seems that like God - in whom he absolutely believes and loves - he's been around for ever. And in terms of the modern Northern story, he has been.

He was on the periphery when Con McCloskey and his wife Patricia started protesting about housing discrimination against Catholics in the early 1960s. "Did you know Ken Maginnis [ former UUP MP] once supported one of the protests, about 1965 or 1966?" "Really?" "He did. He picketed Dungannon Council. I've always had great time for Ken."

Mgr Faul marched with the Civil Rights movement in 1968. He protested against human rights abuses by the British army and RUC in the 1970s and beyond. He railed against republican and loyalist violence. With Sr Sarah Clarke and a couple of other priests he campaigned for the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four and other innocents when nobody else would listen. He brought the H-Block hunger strike petering to a halt. The IRA never forgave him for that. They should, or maybe they do (it's complicated and controversial). He's still protesting against injustice. He doesn't trust Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness, not one bit. He likes the cut of Michael McDowell.

He's getting regular treatment for his cancer in the Bon Secours private hospital in Dublin. "I don't suffer pain or nausea but I get tired from the treatment." His seven doctor nephews and nieces keep an eye on him.

In Enniskillen hospital in October he asked the nurse at 8pm what was on the medical agenda. You're going under the knife at 11pm, she told him. "Get me a priest quick, I told her," he says, laughing. "I got confession, kept the priest for hours with all I had to tell him, and sure I didn't give a damn after that." He hopes he'll beat the Big C. "But I'm not afraid of dying," he says. Over a couple of hours in his sitting room in Carrickmore he talks about life and death. Mostly, however, he just wants to concentrate on two issues: getting the "exiled" safely returned, and the corruption of society by the paramilitaries. Republican and loyalist paramilitary criminality must be resisted, he says.

During the interview, our conversation is interrupted by a couple calling to the parochial house, having driven from the South to seek assistance from the priest. Eight years ago the husband was forced out of a Northern town by the IRA, and even though he was told twice he could safely return home when he did so the local IRA militia sent him and his family packing again - little IRA command dictating to big IRA command.

Under no circumstances, says the man - and he means no circumstances - will he allow further details of his plight to be published. "I was warned by them the two worst things I could do was go to the media or the police. I'm sorry, it just wouldn't be worth it."

"It's the law of omerta," says Mgr Faul. "You can't speak, you can't go to the police, you can't go to the courts, you can't go to the press. It's barbarous. There is a law, but it's the law of force. There is an order, but it's the order of fear." Mgr Faul says there are 5,000 people "banished" from Northern Ireland by republican and loyalist paramilitaries. Recently Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said that the IRA was no threat to anyone, including those expelled from the North, but that ultimately their return was a matter for the communities.

"But that's not good enough," says Mgr Faul, who believes that Adams has the power to facilitate the safe return of those exiled from nationalist areas. "This is a human rights issue. These people were forced out by the 'controlocrat' criminals of the IRA, UDA and UVF and must be allowed return home. The community has no right to interfere. Either there is law or no law. That is the basis of a civilised society."

Many republicans despise Mgr Faul, but they can't undermine his moral authority or his record for tackling abuse and injustice wherever it arose. In the 1970s he and Fr Raymond Murray and Sr Sarah and Fr Brian Brady were lonely figures campaigning for the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six.

"You know how I knew they were innocent? I spoke to the top IRA man in Long Kesh, Billy McKee and he told me, 'The Birmingham Six? They're not ours, they've nothing to do with us. As for the Guildford Four, we would arrest some of them ourselves'. That was it for me." He sidetracks here to take a swipe at University College, Galway. "The solicitor Gareth Peirce, who did such great work for the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four, received an honorary degree from Galway. But Sr Sarah, who was from Co Galway, near Portumna, and campaigned tirelessly for 23 years for those poor innocent people wasn't offered one. She was very hurt by that. 'Sure she was only a poor wee nun from Galway.' That was the view. Typical though, the slavish Irish."

Oddly for a man so associated with justice campaigns, Mgr Faul does not have an honorary law degree - or any doctorate for that matter - from the likes of Trinity, UCD or any other university. Queen's University, Belfast offered him one some years ago but Mgr Faul, a former Latin teacher, turned it down in protest at the abolition of the college's classics department, even though Latin and Greek can still be studied at Queen's.

He has little sympathy for Northern Secretary Peter Hain who had to scrap his on-the-runs Bill recently. He thinks the OTRs issue was completely mishandled. "With Fr Murray and others we got about 50 home in the 1980s. We did it quietly, unofficially. We'd chat to a local RUC chief and say was so-and-so on your computer? The officer might say, 'Look, let him come home, keep his head down, stay away from republican parades, we'll leave him alone, let the dust settle'. It was all done informally and there were RUC men who took chances doing what they did. And they kept their word, and I appreciated that. That's the way it should be done, but now there's too much shouting."

He thinks there should be some legal process, some sense of real expiation for the big crimes of the past, whatever about people having to serve time in prison. "Say it was the fellows who did Enniskillen. What then? Murder is murder, you know." Getting the exiled home and locating the remaining bodies of the disappeared should be tied in with an amnesty for paramilitary fugitives, he adds. A truth and reconciliation process wouldn't work.

This year is the 25th anniversary of the H-Block hunger strikes when 10 men died. Last year former IRA prisoner Richard O'Rawe triggered a huge row in republicanism over the claim in his book, Blanketmen that the prisoners' leadership accepted a deal in early July 1981 to end the fast but that this decision was overruled by the IRA army council. Had that deal been accepted Bobby Sands and three others would have died, not 10. The implication here was that the strike was prolonged to ensure the election of Owen Carron that August, which in a sense marked the beginning of Provisional republicanism's successful shift to Sinn Féin politics.

Mgr Faul is generally in accord with O'Rawe's account. He says that in late July when six had died he organised a meeting of the relatives of the strikers at a hotel in Toomebridge and it was agreed that the families should ask the IRA army council to call off the strike, notwithstanding any opposition from the prisoners.

He recalled: "At the meeting we agreed on two options, either to go to the media and say what the families had decided, or privately go to Gerry Adams to ask him to go to the IRA. We agreed on the second, which I now greatly regret. When we were coming out of the hotel Andy Pollak (former Irish Times journalist) was there waiting for us. I don't know how he knew about the meeting, but we would not talk to him. And I regret that too.

"We all drove to Belfast and met Adams and co around midnight. We had a long discussion and he agreed to convey the families' wishes to the army council. We expected an order from the IRA to end the strike, but it never happened. If we'd got the story into the press it might have been a fait accomplis."

By August Fr Faul persuaded some of the families to instruct doctors to resuscitate and medically feed their loved ones as soon as they slipped into unconsciousness. That was how the strike finally ended. Mgr Faul was vilified by republicans for his actions. Afterwards IRA prisoners refused to allow him say Mass in their blocks.

"I'm only sorry I did not intervene earlier; more lives could have been saved. Four men died for an election. It was a very dear price." Senior republicans such as Adams, Danny Morrison and Brendan McFarlane, the Officer Commanding (OC) of the IRA prisoners during the strike, emphatically reject O'Rawe's claims and by implication, Mgr Faul's similar views. While many republicans still revile him, Mgr Faul says his action in ending the strike suited the republican design.

"Thatcher was never going to give in. Carron was elected, and the strike was going nowhere. I heard from other IRA men that some of the senior men accepted that I got them off the hook of the strike. 'But we'll never tell Faul that'. That was the line."

Mgr Faul describes himself as a Christian first. Was he a nationalist?

"I am an Irishman. Nationalism can be a dangerous thing."

Would he like to see a united Ireland?

"I am not worried about that. I want to see a peaceful Ireland. Anyway it's more or less united as it is; the Border hardly exists any more."

He believes Ian Paisley will never share power with Adams.

"He'll do no deal because the word Catholic seems to stick in his gut. It's a pity, it's just that word, he doesn't regard us as Christian, you know. But he has some good points as well. He's against abortion and works for his Catholic constituents."

He admires Pope Benedict XVI for his "excellent" conservative theology, but says Germans "can be a bit dull". He loved the charisma and warmth of Pope John Paul II "although I think he should have retired when he was ill because even I find that when you're ill you just don't have the same energy".

Mgr Faul says Mass in his house every morning, reads the papers, writes the occasional article. He's unable for parish duties although he celebrates Mass in the church every Sunday. People still call to him seeking help.

He says 73 years on the planet is "a good spell" but he would like to reach 84, the age his father died. When he finally shuffles off to the hereafter he has his pitch ready for Saint Peter: "I hope I could say I helped the poor people when they were in trouble, that I gave them money and help, that I got them to England when they had to get away, that I helped the prisoners.

"It's important to bear witness," he adds. "The quality Irish people most admire is courage, and not just physical courage but moral courage as well; that you can stand up, speak your mind, even though you're getting lambasted from all sides. You have to stand up."