THE BODY of Cardinal Cahal Daly will be taken today to St Peter’s Cathedral in Belfast, where it will lie in repose.
His remains will be taken from there to St Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh tomorrow, where it will lie until requiem Mass at noon on Tuesday.
A special prayer service at St Peter’s will be led by Bishop Noel Treanor of Down and Connor.
He will be buried in the cathedral grounds close to his immediate predecessors cardinals Ó Fiaich, Conway and d’Alton.
Dr Daly (92) died in hospital on New Year’s Eve. He was taken to the specialist coronary care unit at the Belfast City Hospital on Monday, where he was treated for heart problems.
Cardinal Daly had a history of heart trouble and suffered a heart attack in 1982. He missed the funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005 because of the ill-health following his retirement in 1996.
Cardinal Seán Brady, the Catholic primate, visited his predecessor in hospital a short time before Dr Daly’s death was announced. He said the former archbishop of Armagh died peacefully, surrounded by close friends and family.
“It is difficult to do full justice to the significance and achievements of his long, full and happy life,” he said.
“But I believe, when fully assessed and appreciated, the legacy of Cardinal Cahal Daly to the ecclesiastical and civil history of Ireland will be seen as immense.”
Tributes have been paid by the President, the Taoiseach, and the main political parties in Ireland, both North and South. Northern Secretary Shaun Woodward and former British prime minister Tony Blair also expressed their sadness at the death, while praising his contribution to peace.
Leaders of the main Protestant churches have been quick to pay tribute to Cardinal Daly.
Dr Stafford Carson, the Presbyterian Moderator, said the late cardinal was an outstanding academic who would always be remembered for what he called “the huge contribution he made to the developing of better relationships between the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches”.
“His Co Antrim roots, of which he was always proud, gave him a deep understanding of the essential part that Presbyterians have played in the history of our community,” he said.
Dr Carson also praised Dr Daly for standing “totally opposed to violence” and for being “an outspoken critic of the armed campaign of the IRA”.
He concluded that Dr Daly “recognised that any future arrangements for the governance of Northern Ireland had to involve unionist and nationalist, Protestant and Catholic, in order to create a community in which everyone could feel at home”.
The Church of Ireland primate, Rev Alan Harper, expressed his deep regret.
“During the most challenging of times, the cardinal gave wise and courageous leadership, both as bishop of Down and Connor and subsequently as archbishop of Armagh,” he said.
“The cardinal was a most distinguished scholar as well as an outstanding leader of the Roman Catholic people of Ireland,” Canon Ian Ellis, who edits the independent Church of Ireland Gazette, recalled.
“Shortly after Cardinal Daly was appointed as bishop of Down and Connor, I attended a meeting of the Council of the Anglican Centre in Rome . . . Each day I found myself sharing meals with officials from different departments in the curia. I remember one saying to me that, with Cahal Daly’s appointment to Down and Connor, he supposed Fr Des Wilson would soon be reinstated [in west Belfast], following differences with bishop Philbin, whom Cahal Daly succeeded.
“When I returned home, it was soon reported in the news that this in fact had happened.
“The episode illustrated, for me, the immense knowledge of world affairs that is concentrated in the Vatican, but also the nature of Cahal Daly himself.”
The president of the Methodist Church in Ireland, the Rev Donald P Ker, praised Cardinal Daly “as a man of strong principles, coupled with a gentle Christian spirit”.