I WAS brought up a Catholic, but soon realised I did not believe in God any more than I believed in Father Christmas. When I was a young man, a Catholic nun discovered that I had, as she saw it, "lost my faith".

She insisted that I should talk to a priest, whose name was Father Smith. "He'll soon sort you out," she said.

Fr Smith made no attempt to "sort me out". We did talk about religion, but he did not promote his own above others. Mostly, we talked about social, moral and political issues, and found that we agreed on all of them.

In the end, he said: "It is as though you and I are standing on opposite sides of a mountain. The mountain you see looks completely different from the one that I am looking at, but it is, in fact, the same mountain."

I remain an atheist, but I have never forgotten the wise words of Fr Smith. They offer a key to understanding between different religions, a way out of the apparent impasse which says: "Mine is the one true faith. I am right, therefore you must be wrong."

Pete Winstanley, Durham.