Bishop Edward Daly placed his hand on the Bible yesterday morning, promising to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Moments later we were transported back to the streets of Derry on the evening of January 30th 1972.
It was the 75th day of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry and archive television pictures showed the then Father Daly crouching down, frantically waving a white handkerchief soiled by the blood of 17-year-old Jackie Duddy. His bullet-scarred body lay a few feet way.
In the witness-box the now 67-year-old retired Bishop of Derry told the story behind the images most deeply associated in the public mind with Bloody Sunday. The last time he gave a full statement was in 1972 at the Widgery tribunal held in Coleraine and considered by locals to have been a "whitewash". Now he sat down to a gentle ripple of applause from the public gallery.
There could hardly have been a more suitable place for a bishop to be giving evidence. The inquiry room in Derry's neo-Gothic Guildhall is a church-like chamber, with magnificent stained glass windows and a huge pipe organ reaching up to the curving dark-beamed ceiling. Wearing his clerical garb, Dr Daly was composed and articulate, showing no signs of ill health despite the stroke which forced him to retire as Bishop of Derry in 1993.
Quiet tears were wiped away by relatives of some of the 13 who were killed that day when still photographs were displayed on screens showing Dr Daly administering last rites to Jackie Duddy. He remembered it vividly, he said. The Civil Rights march was making its way through the town when Dr Daly heard gunshots and later began running with the rest of the crowd away from the armoured cars and soldiers towards Rossville Flats, a 15-minute walk from the guildhall.
He remembered seeing Jackie Duddy "smiling or laughing" running beside him, both looking behind them as they fled from the soldiers. A shot rang out. The boy gasped loudly and fell to the ground on his face. Dr Daly remembered his red shirt and the dark bloodstain that appeared on it. The only signs of strain came as he described attempts to get medical attention for the teenager, who by then was either dying or dead.
As Dr Daly and others tended to him, he told the inquiry, he had seen a man who was dancing hysterically around the car park shot by a soldier "who had taken deliberate aim". He recalled another man producing a handgun and shooting in the direction of the soldiers. "We screamed at him to go away," he said.
He was "aghast" at what he had witnessed and told how he gave the last rites to many others that day. "There was no justification for it," he said. After defending the right of any community to protest against injustices, he explained that rioting was a way of life in Derry in those days. It was a "recreation" - it was cowboys and Indians with "real cowboys and real Indians".
After almost three hours he concluded his evidence and rose from his seat to loud applause from the gallery. Through their lawyers, some relatives praised him for his courage, commitment and the care he had given Jackie Duddy and others that night. When he left the guildhall, it was on the arm of Kay Duddy, a sister of Jackie, who slowly walked the bishop to a waiting car.