Former paramilitary enemies who have found God have said they are proof that there is hope for the future of the North.
The theme of this year's Good Friday devotional service in St Anne's Cathedral was reconciliation. Two former UVF members and an ex-member of the IRA addressed worshippers along with Mr Michael McGoldrick, whose only son, Michael, was killed by loyalists four years ago.
Mr Tom Kelly said he had been in the IRA from the age of 15 and was interned in 1973. He had been in prison through blanket protests and two hunger strikes. He described the Maze as "a university of terrorism; and I got more deeply involved".
He was eventually convicted of attempted murder and said "God was not in my life, I had no concept of life, no concept of God". He now realised he ended up in prison because he "had shut God out and chose evil, and was paying the consequences for it".
Mr Kelly spends much of his time speaking to youth groups with his colleague Mr Jim Tate, a former member of the UVF. Mr Kelly said 20 years ago he and Mr Tate would have had "blind hatred" for each other.
Pastor David Hamilton, who now lives in Manchester, said he had once been a "crazy" member of the UVF.
Mr Hamilton said that while people believed the problems that remained in the North were insurmountable, they were not. The change that had come over him was proof of this.