Beauty and bloodshed

This is a remarkable book. Frank, fresh, and unfettered by the politic, whether secular or ecclesiastic; it is also a rare insight into the life of an Irish bishop. It does not deal, however, with Dr Edward Daly's years as Bishop of Derry. Illness did not allow for that, but we can only hope he will continue the story.

What will have the most impact on readers, almost inevitably, is his graphic and unequivocal recollection of Bloody Sunday, with an undiluted anger still pouring through the lines of his account of that slaughter of the innocents.

But there is so much more that is memorable: his account of grim days in St Columb's College; his love of theatre and show business; the effect of dealing with so much death and grief; his experience of "Arctic cold" at RTE.

It begins with an account of a "blissfully happy childhood" in Belleek, Co Fermanagh, where his father Tom had a grocery shop and undertaking business. Tom Daly had been an IRA officer in the War of Independence, but by the time Edward Daly was born in December 1933, both parents were "moderate nationalists". Three sisters and one brother followed.

That idyllic childhood was followed by years of misery at St Columb's College in Derry. Very homesick and with "hunger [that] was ever-present" from the beginning, he was "further bewildered when the strap was produced". It was used by priests as well as lay teachers. Punishment was regular and "frequently verged on the brutal".

He recalled one particularly cruel episode at the college in January 1948. A classmate committed "a relatively trivial offence" which was "exaggerated out of all proportion by the Dean . . ." The entire class refused to co-operate with the Dean's investigation.

"As well as being strapped, all privileges were cancelled for the remainder of that school year. We were not permitted outside the College, even if parents came to visit; we were not permitted to receive parcels from home, parcels on which we depended so much [for food] . . . The punishment was vastly disproportionate to the offence."

It also had a direct impact on his parents. By May 1948 they had accumulated enough petrol for a drive to Derry and back. It would be the first time they were able to visit him at St Columb's. They presumed the Dean would relent, all those months later. "He refused permission for me to go out for a meal with them. I was angry and hurt by the humiliation of my parents."

Thirty years later the Dean (who is not identified) was a bishop colleague of Dr Daly's. "I often wondered if he remembered that day in May 1948. We never got around to talking about it. In any case, my anger and hurt had long gone. He was acting, perhaps, in the tradition of the time. It was a bad, cruel and unchristian tradition."

As to why he became a priest he said "to this day, I am unable to find a simple answer to that question . . . there certainly was no `Damascus' moment! I suppose that it could be said that I drifted into it . . ." It was another career option then.

In September 1951, just as he began his studies in Maynooth, he received a letter from Bishop Neil Farren of Derry telling him he had been nominated to study at the Irish College in Rome. "I was shattered and so were my parents". But he was advised the offer should not be refused.

He went with great reluctance but soon was "utterly captivated by the city of Rome" and realised "I had not been happier since I left primary school."

He gave "considerable thought to the issue of celibacy . . . Young Italian women are particularly attractive. Spending much of a summer on the beach at Formia surrounded by attractive young women concentrated the mind!"

The consequence of celibacy he found most challenging was not being able to be a parent. However, by the time he was ordained to the subdiaconate in 1956, "I was convinced that priesthood offered me a way of life that would be most fulfilling and challenging."

Later that year his father was diagnosed as having cancer. "I was broken-hearted." Tom Daly died on February 20th, 1957. As his father's remains were being removed from the house, two men wanted to put a Tricolour on the coffin. "My mother and the other adult members of my family circle refused to agree to this. I agreed with them."

On March 16th 1957 he was ordained in Belleek and appointed a curate at Castlederg in Co Tyrone where he spent his first five years as a priest. It was also where his love of theatre began to flourish due to his involvement with the Castlederg Players, which he helped set up. In 1962 he was appointed to St Eugene's parish in Derry, with responsibility for the Bogside. "There was poverty and overcrowding everywhere." Housing conditions were appalling. "I had never seen anything like it before." It was a situation "brought about by political corruption and injustice". Through gerrymandering, unionists "maintained absolute control of a city in which they were a minority." The Derry Housing Association was set up. It "was the brainchild of a young Irish priest who was working with Irish immigrants in London. His name was Father Eamonn Casey, subsequently Bishop Eamonn Casey."

He recalls with illuminating insight the world-wide ferment of 1968 and how this was reflected in Derry; the rise of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, and the famous banned march of October 5th that year when civil rights protesters were beaten off the streets by the RUC. "The genie was out of the bottle."

He is scathing about the RUC. Attitudes to the police "changed radically. The RUC, to this day, have never succeeded in gaining the trust and respect of many in the nationalist community in Derry."

He recounts, with anger, the death in 1969 of Sammy Devaney after an unprovoked RUC beating. No one was ever made accountable for the killing. "The RUC, as ever, closed ranks."

But Dr Daly will forever be associated in the public mind with the events of Sunday, January 30th 1972.

"I was running and, like most of the crowd, looking back every few moments to see if the armoured cars and soldiers were still coming. They kept coming. Around this time, I remember seeing someone thrown in the air by a Saracen."

He noticed a teenager running beside him. "He caught my attention because he was smiling and laughing . . . he seemed about 16 or 17. I did not see anything in his hands. I didn't know his name then, but I later learned that his name was Jackie Duddy." They kept running.

"I heard a shot and simultaneously this young boy, just beside me, gasped or groaned loudly . . . I glanced around and the young boy just fell on his face . .

My first impression was that he had been hit by a rubber bullet . . "

There were several bursts of gunfire. He threw himself on the ground while between 20 and 30 people nearby took cover behind a wall. "During a lull in the firing I looked over from where I was lying and saw Jackie still lying out in the middle of the car park where he had fallen . . . I then decided to make my way out to him. I took a handkerchief from my pocket and waved it for a few moments and then I got up in a crouched position and I went to the boy. I knelt beside him. There was a substantial amount of blood oozing from his shirt . . . I put my handkerchief inside the shirt to try and staunch the bleeding."

A young man "dashed past us . . he began dancing up and down and screaming at the soldiers. I thought he was shouting `shoot me, shoot me', or something of that nature. He had his hands raised over his head, waving them around. He had nothing in his hands . . . a soldier stepped from the gable end of Block One of the Rossville Flats, went down on one knee, took aim and fired at him. The young man staggered and then he started running around crazily for a few moments."

The young man, Michael Bridge, had been shot in the leg. "It was the one occasion in my life when I witnessed one human being deliberately shoot another human being, both of them being close to me and within my vision. One was armed, the other was unarmed. This occurred as I was kneeling beside another young boy whose life-blood was seeping away. It was a terrifying and shocking experience."

They decided to make a run for it, carrying Jackie Duddy. Dr Daly went in front waving a blood-stained handkerchief. There was a BBC News camera crew nearby. An ambulance was called, and Jackie Duddy's body was taken to hospital. Dr Daly returned to the Rossville Street flats area. "I was thunderstruck by the scene that met my eyes. Until then I had no conception of the scale of the horror . . . there were dead and dying and wounded everywhere."

He was interviewed a little later by the BBC and described what he had seen as murder. That evening, returning to the parochial house, he was stopped by a group of soldiers. "I showed them my hands, which were completely covered in blood. I asked what on earth possessed them to do what they did. They did not insist on going through with the search. I arrived at my house. I was angry, frustrated and distraught . . . I wept profusely."

That day was for him "a defining moment". "Ever since my experience on that terrible day, I could no longer find any justification for the use of armed aggression by any faction in the North." Later in the book he writes "I came to have a profound detestation of any group that sought to impose its will on others through force of arms."

He was asked by the taoiseach at the time, Jack Lynch, whether he would agree to go to the US to help counter British propaganda that claimed some of the dead had been gunmen and bombers. He agreed to do so.

But his anger becomes most overt when dealing with the Widgery Tribunal. It was "the second atrocity". It was "a whitewash. The guilty were found to be innocent. The innocent were found to be guilty. It was a complete travesty of justice." He felt "profoundly betrayed by Widgery. I felt abused. I shared the anger, if not the cynicism, of the entire Catholic community . . . I hope the findings of the Saville Tribunal will be more in harmony with the evidence submitted and tested."

Dealing with death and the perpetual violence began to take its toll. "I had experienced too much grief and found it very difficult at times to carry on. For the first time in my life, I experienced a crisis of faith and a profound crisis about my priesthood and my continued membership of it . . . I seriously considered opting out of priesthood. It was a Gethsemane experience, a period of anguish and darkness that persisted for a couple of months."

In April 1973 he collapsed during Holy Week ceremonies. Hepatitis was diagnosed. While recovering he noticed an advertisement in The Irish Times for a Catholic Religious Adviser at RTE. He applied and got the job, beginning in July 1973.

He was "taken aback by the anticlericalism and fierce antipathy to Catholicism" of some at RTE. Previously he had only experienced this "from bigots in other churches. I had never experienced it from a self-proclaimed coreligionist, practising or non-practising . . . all kinds of hang-ups about the Catholic Church emerged to which I had never been exposed before. I began to feel very glad that I came from a part of the country where my Church was in a minority position and relatively powerless."

He also found "an inherent distrust of RTE and RTE people, including myself, among the clergy and particularly among bishops . . ." And he soon realised that Northern Ireland issues "were not welcome as a topic of conversation in most gatherings of Dublin people."

Then in January 1974 he was invited to meet the Papal Nuncio, Dr Gaetano Alibrandi, at the Nunciature in Dublin. He was offered the appointment as Bishop of Derry. "I was quite speechless. I didn't know what to say or whether to laugh or cry." The nuncio thought it "wonderful news". Still in shock, Dr Daly eventually agreed to accept the post.

It was another consequence of Bloody Sunday. "For better or worse, I am quite sure that I would never have been subsequently appointed Bishop of Derry had I not been thrust into the limelight because of what happened on that day," he writes.

Mister, Are You A Priest? Jottings by Bishop Edward Daly is published by Four Courts Press, £11.95