Church apology over policy on suicide sought

The Catholic Church should apologise and ask for forgiveness from the families of suicide victims, according to a priest who has worked closely with bereaved families.

Father Aidan Troy, from Ardoyne parish in north Belfast, said the church had a huge role to play in helping to destigmatise suicide.

"We have to ask forgiveness for the hurt we caused families in the past when we, for instance, stigmatised them by the way we acted towards them. It's a bit like the abuse issue. Sometimes we get things wrong and the only thing to do is to say we were wrong - and we were wrong. Now, we were wrong for good reason because we didn't want to glorify it this_is_a_left_sq_bracketsuicide] and we didn't want to make out that this was a great option."

Father Troy said the church also had to listen to families bereaved by suicide. "The only experts I have found over the last year are the families bereaved by suicide, and let them tell us how they're dealing with it, what they want us to do by way of prayer and celebration of liturgy."

Father Troy was speaking during a recess at the publication of a report on young people's mental health in Cork where he praised the research underpinning the report and welcomed suggestions that trying to prevent suicide should not be confined to school programmes.

Father Troy pointed out that, while north and west Belfast had been hit by a particularly bad spate of 13 suicides of young men and women between Christmas Eve 2003 and February 14th, 2004, the problem was continuing.