CELEBRITY FAMILIES
How Bono discovered having a half-brother from his late father’s affair: ‘This was all kept a secret’
“My father was obviously going through a lot, but partly his head was elsewhere because his heart was elsewhere.”
Bono shocked fans with an incredible confession, revealing that he has a half-brother that he did not know about for decades. The U2 singer recently detailed his relationship with him and how he found out about his existence, during a recent interview with BBC Radio.
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“I have another brother, whom I love and adore, who I didn’t know I had,” he explained, adding that he only knew about him in 2000, because it was all kept secret.
Bono says he is now “at peace” with it, as his mother Iris, who died in 1974, had no idea that her husband had another child as result of an affair.
“It’s a very close family and I could tell that my father had a deep friendship with this gorgeous woman, who’s part of the family,” the singer said. “And then they had a child. And this was all kept a secret.”
Bono had an emotional conversion about it before he passed away in 2001. “I asked him, did he love my mother, and he said yes,” he shared. “And I said, how could this happen, and he said, ‘It can’, and that he was trying to put it right.
“He wasn’t apologising, he was just stating, these are the facts. And I’m at peace with it,” Bono added. “My father was obviously going through a lot, but partly his head was elsewhere because his heart was elsewhere.”
He also admits that he wished he was able to offer more support to his father, as they had a complicated relationship. “I apologized to my father in a little chapel in France after he passed away. I went up to this little chapel, there was nobody there. Lit a candle, and I got on my knees and I just said, ‘Look, I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. You went through a lot and please forgive me.’ And I felt free,” he conluded.
