Families achieve 'delicate peace'

Protests in north Belfast about where a mother and her son, who committed suicide within 15 months of each other, should be buried are petering out.

During last week and early this week several hundred people, the majority of them women, staged protests outside the home of the McMahon family at Portland Place in the New Lodge area.

On Monday night a section of the crowd broke away from the main protest and damaged the flat of Ms Catherine McMahon, who had been briefly married to Mr Mark Catney. He committed suicide in April last year and was buried in the McMahon family plot. However, Mr Catney's mother, Ms Mary Geraldine Cassidy, took her own life in recent weeks. According to her family, it was her wish that she be buried with her son.

When there was no initial agreement, protests against the McMahon family began. Following the intervention of Fr Aidan Troy, the McMahons agreed that Mr Catney's body could be exhumed and reburied with his mother.

This did not immediately solve the dispute. On Thursday evening, however, the Cassidy family issued a statement calling for the "suspension" of the protests. A "delicate peace" had been achieved, Fr Troy said yesterday.