Halt bombing and game, says church leader

The president-elect of the Methodist Church in Ireland, Dr Kenneth Wilson, said yesterday he believed the Republic of Ireland match with Yugoslavia should be called off.

Speaking in a personal capacity, and before last night's Government announcement refusing visas, Dr Wilson said the risk of the FAI losing £2 million as a result was not the issue, rather it was a question of what was right and wrong.

But he also said the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia should stop. Echoing the words of the Rev Prof Peter Stephens, president of the Methodist Church in Britain, he said he believed the bombing had gone beyond what might be considered allowable under the just war theory - the evil resulting was greater than the evil being prevented.

Dr Wilson was speaking at a press conference in Dublin yesterday to announce details of the Methodist Church's annual conference. It takes place in Cork from June 11th to 15th.

Reflecting on the current controversy over refugees, the Rev Noel Fallows expressed concern about new legislation being prepared by the Government in response to a Supreme Court decision limiting deportations.

He felt it could take away more rights from the refugees than they were currently allowed. He also called for granting automatic asylum and refugee status to those people who have waited over a year in Ireland for a decision on their fate by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform.

Refugees who are in Ireland for six months should be allowed to work, he said, and he called for transparency by the Department in all its dealings with them.

The Department should also make public the criteria it used, as well as the process employed, in arriving at decisions on the fate of refugees.

Between 25 and 30 refugees, mainly from Africa, worshipped at Methodist services in Clontarf, where he is a minister, and as a result the congregation there had become very familiar with their problems, he said.

He was glad to see a sea-change in attitudes to refugees where the Kosovans were concerned, but similar sympathy for African victims of ethnic cleansing was long overdue.

He also felt an independent body should be set up immediately to handle the refugees' appeal process.

Mrs Gillian Kingston, of the church's joint theological working party, said that pastoral care where inter-church couples were concerned was not always adequate. Discussion on this had followed the publication by the Roman Catholic Church in these islands last year of its One Bread One Body document on interchurch communion.

Mrs Kingston said she believed a great deal could be done in the area of Eucharistic hospitality by all the churches. This was "a different thing from inter-communion," which she understood as applying to the regular practice of participants. There ought to be occasions where hospitality could be afforded to strangers in a church at special events, she believed.

She also said that, whereas every church was entitled to do its own thing, it was desirable that there be some consultation with other churches when decisions were likely to affect them.