LAWLESS REPUBLICANS RIOT AT THE WATERFRONT HALL

On Monday 29th March, lawless Republicans of the Markets and Lower Ormeau area of Belfast showed themselves in their true colours. A mob some 300 strong gathered outside the prestigious Waterfront Concert Hall where a festival of Orange Culture was to be held. Those trying to gain access to the Waterfront had to run the gauntlet of the vicious mob. Protestants were jeered, stoned and spat upon. A number were injured, and Assembly Member Norman Boyd and his wife, kicked and punched by these thugs who hammered on the glass windows, baying for Protestant blood.It was some time before police restored order.

In 1966 an earlier generation of "Market Mobsters" attacked Dr. lan Paisley and a Free Presbyterian march going through Cromac Street with stones and iron filings - "Sinn Fein Confetti."

In 1935 in the same area gunmen opened fire on the 12th July Orange Parade.

Another twelve Irish clerics face sex scandal charges, according to shock new figures. Most are ex-Christian Brothers who have been accused by former pupils. The twelve will go on trial over the next few months in both Ulster and the Republic. Figures compiled by the Catholic Church show that since 1991 convictions have been recorded against thirty five priests, brothers and former clergy. Eight were in the North and twenty seven in the South.

"It's a terrible litany of shame and there is no end in sight," a long-serving priest admitted.

"The vast majority of priests and brothers are extremely religious and good-living. But, unfortunately, the notoriety of a tiny number has rubbed off onto the rest of us. We have all become victims. Some Catholics no longer hold priests in high esteem. Some have been openly abused  in the street and spat upon."

The latest figures for prosecutions were revealed as church  leaders were still reeling from  the suicide of Fr. Sean Fortune. The Wexford priest was on bail facing twenty nine charges of sex abuse against young boys.

The church could be hit by  huge compensation claims by alleged victims. Some claims have already been settled privately but others are expected to go before the courts to be decided.

The Sunday Times 28/02/1999

NUNS ACCUSED OF ENSLAVING

by

Her only sin was to be born of the rape of her 15-year-old mother in fiercely conservative Quebec in 1947. Yet Alice Quinton has paid a terrible price for her illegitimacy.

She and 3,000 other "children of sin" were wrongly classified as mentally ill when their orphanages, run by the Roman Catholic Church were converted into psychiatric institutions in 1954 so that they could qualify for funding from the federal government. Many children were subjected to years of physical abuse.

More than 40 years later, they are demanding compensation and a public apology. They accuse the government of having illegally imprisoned healthy children who should have been at school.

Quinton 52, is still haunted by her time at St. Julian's psychiatric hospital near Quebec City, where she was incarcerated at the age of seven with 500 other healthy orphans and 900 mentally ill adults. She remembers a childhood of dark cells and tranquillising drugs. Once, accused of "telling tales", she was punished by a nun who placed her in a straitjacket, strapped her to a metal bedframe and, she says, left her there for three weeks with a chamber pot under the bed.

"The nuns tormented us and treated us as slaves. They made us pay for the sins of our parents," she said.

Illiterate and unskilled when she was released at 23, Quinton was afraid to seek help in case social workers sent her back to St. Julian's. She married, but left her husband, saying he had beaten their three children.

Most of the orphans, like Quinton, ended up unemployed or in menial jobs, struggling to adapt to life beyond the confines of an institution.

Bruno Ray is one of the few who has succeeded in confronting the ghosts of his past. A retired teacher with a doctorate in literature, he was 11 when his orphanage, Mount Providence, was one of 12 re-classified as an asylum.

"Overnight, my daily routine changed to bathing mentally ill patients, followed by sitting in a rocking chair," he said.

Six hundred psychiatric patients were brought to Mount Providence. Two hundred abandoned children were adopted or returned to their families; 400 others, including Roy, were labelled insane or retarded.

Roy is now president of the Committee of Institutionalised Duplessis Orphans - named after Maurice Duplessis, the arch-conservative premier of Quebec from 1936-39 and 1944-59. Despite a huge public outcry in Quebec, however, the orphans are still an apology, let alone any compensation. Last week some protested in straitjackets outside provincial government offices after the Catholic church declined to express any regret.

"I wholeheartedly defend the devoted religious women who gave 40 to 50 years of their lives working in the institutions. They shouldn't have to make apologies," said Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte, a senior representative of the Catholic church in Canada. He described the orphans as "victims of life", and challenged them to prove any allegations of abuse.

A group action by the Duplessis orphans for compensation failed after a court ruling that each individual's complaint was different. A police investigation of 241 complaints concluded that the evidence of abuse was too old and unreliable.  One orphan has won his case: Antoine Ceran, a former Mount Providence resident, pressed for a criminal trial of a lay member of staff who sexually assaulted him while he was restrained in a straitjacket. Richard Burton, the staff member, was found guilty but was considered too old to go to prison.  No damages were awarded to Ceran.

The Quebec government is coming under increasing pressure over the issue. Daniel Jacoby, the province's ombudsman, has like Quinton,  urged it to open a public inquiry, apologise and grant compensation. The government has responded only by correcting the medical files of those who were wrongly classified as mentally ill.

Roy is not giving up. "The fact that I managed to emerge intact should not be allowed to justify the monstrous system we had to live through," he said. "When a government does what Duplessis did, there are moral consequences to pay for. That's why I continue to struggle."

"AND UPON HER FOREHEAD WAS A NAME WRITTEN, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." - (REVELATION 17: 5)

AUTHOR ALLEGES VATICAN GUARDS WERE 'GAY'

ROME

An Italian author claimed yesterday that a slain Swiss Guard commander, and the Swiss Guard corporal alleged to have killed him, were gay lovers and he was convinced a third man was involved in the killings.

Massimo Lacchei made the claims at a book presentation a day after the Vatican concluded its investigation into last May's killings with a report accusing young vice-corporal Cedric Tornay of shooting commander Alois Estermann and his wife before turning the gun on himself.

In his book Verbum Dei, Verbum Gay (God's Word, Gay Word) Lacchei wrote about a gay male couple in the Swiss Guard but used false names. After the Vatican report he decided to reveal that the couple he wrote about were allegedly Estermann and Tornay. "This is not fiction, they (the stories) are based on real encounters," Lacchei told reporters.

He claimed he first met Estermann and Tornay at a Sunday brunch of homosexual men in a Rome apartment about a year before the killings. "Tomay tended to talk more. Estermann spoke a lot less. Estermann was very careful and he intervened when Tomay said too much," Lacchei said.

He said a well-known political figure and a monsignor also attended the brunch. He declined to name the other people who he said attended the gathering.

"I think all three of them were killed. Look for this third man," Lacchei said. He refused to believe the Vatican's official version that Tomay killed the Estermanns in a "fit of madness" after being passed over for a military decoration awarded to the Pope's guards.

Lacchei claimed he met Tornay again about a month before the Vatican killings and the two went to Lacchei's apartment. Lacchei alleged that during their meeting he was able to see something peculiar on Tornay's body.

"I can prove that what I am saying is the truth. I knew Tornay very well and I know that he had something physical about him that his mother could confirm," Lacchei said.

Monday's Vatican report treated the deaths as an open-and-shut case and excluded the involvement of others.

It suggested Tornay, 23, suffered from behavioural problems, possibly caused by an abnormal growth in his brain - a cyst the size of a pigeon's egg was discovered during his autopsy. Blood samples showed that Tornay also used marijuana, the Vatican said.

Tornay's mother has accused the Vatican of covering up the truth about the triple killing and has said she has documents to prove that her son was not responsible.

A Vatican spokesman said: "The pain of a mother is understandable ... but a very detailed investigation leaves no room for an alternative hypothesis."

- REUTERS

TONY BOOTH PRIEST IN ROW OVER MARRIAGE

A Roman Catholic priest was criticised for defying church teaching by holding a service to mark the fourth marriage of Tony Blair's father-in-law, the actor Tony Booth.

The front page of the Catholic Herald accuses the priest of conducting a "blessing in disguise" and "undermining" church teaching on marriage.

Fr. John Thompson, parish priest of St. Francis de Sales Church, Walton, Liverpool, performed a 40-minute service last Friday for Mr. Booth and Stephanie Buckley, who has had four previous husbands.

But after critical reports appeared in the religious press, Fr. Thompson, who is first cousin to Mr. Booth, insisted that he had not broken Canon Law by holding the service.

The Catholic Church teaches that marriage is for life and someone who remarries while their spouse is still alive is considered to be committing adultery.

Msgr. Kieran Conry, director of the Catholic media office, said it was an error to hold a service which could be misunder- stood to be a remarriage, or a blessing of a remarriage.

RADIO MARY'S "HOLY WAR" SPLITS POLISH ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH

Nationalist Catholic priests have taken to the Polish airwaves to wage a holy war against alleged Jewish conspiracies, the government, the West and anyone who disagrees with their interpretation of God's Word.

The success of Radio Maryja (Mary) has rattled the mainstream Church, which has seen its congregations decline since the collapse of Communism. The Polish Episcopate has now set up its own station, Radio Plus, as religious rivalries go on-air.

Mixing populist rants with syrupy religious pop songs, Radio Maryja has attracted four million listeners - one in ten Poles - and turned the small-town radio station into a potent political and broadcasting force. At the last general election 20 MPs were elected with its backing.

The station's founder, Fr. Tadeusz Rydzyk, and his colleagues in the missionary Redemptorist order, thunder against any- thing that smacks to them of liberalism.

Their message has been a hit with the losers of the economic revolution. But it has irked even conservative Roman Catholics. With its derogatory references to "non-Poles", "anti-Polish" conspiracies and "American Jews", it is accused of fuelling anti-semitism in a country where "Jew" remains a term of vilification and "Jewish plots" a favourite theme.

It is a particularly sensitive time for such matters. An extreme nationalist, Kazimeirz Switon, is occupying a site at the former Auschwitz concentration camp where a burgeoning forest of crucifixes commemorate the execution of 152 Polish Catholics by the Nazis in 1941.

The juxtaposition of such strong Christian symbolism with a place of predominantly Jewish suffering has upset Jewish sensibilities and created an international controversy.

Set up seven years ago as a small, listener-financed broadcaster, the station has become a lucrative business. At its head- quarters in Torun, hotels, restaurants, shops and conference centres are being built for its thousands of self-styled "pilgrims". An electronic gate and security guards keep out those who do not belong to the fan club.

The station ranges widely in its targets, with particular venom directed at pro-abortion politicians. It suggests that such legislators should suffer the same fate as prostitutes who went with Nazi soldiers and have their heads shaved.

Nor is the prospect of Poland joining the European Union any more popular. The West is a "perfumed swamp" that will poison the country, according to Fr. Rydzyk.

But while its appeals for donations echo American religious broadcasting, this is not United States-style talk radio. It may be simple and understated but unsophisticated it is not.

The station plays on wide-spread fear: that just nine years after its independence from Moscow, Poland faces the risk of foreign domination, be it through the EU or new laws on the return of property to former Jewish owners.

CATHOLIC SCHOOL FOR BLAIR DAUGHTER

Tony Blair's growing involvement with Roman Catholicism may be seen in news that he and his wife Cheric have selected a single-sex Roman Catholic comprehensive school for their daughter's secondary educa- tion. Although Mr. Blair is a member of the Church of England, he has shown on several occasions that he is very much at home with Rome's theology and ceremony.

PATRON SAINT OF LOVERS ENDS UP CAUSING "AN UNHOLY TIFF"

TWO CITIES CLAIM MARTYR'S REMAINS

by Audrey Magee

Ireland Correspondent

St.Valentine, the patron saint of lovers, has caused a tiff between priests in Glasgow and Dublin.

Franciscan friars in Glasgow and Carmelite priests in Dublin are squabbling over the rightful ownership of the bones of the saint, one of the first Christian martyrs who was beheaded by the Romans for refusing to renounce his faith.

The Glasgow friars claim that they have had the bones of St.Valentine since 1868. But Dublin insists that it received the saint's body as a gift from Pope Gregory XVI in 1836, 32 years earlier.

The dispute, only days before Valentine's Day, is causing great upset in Dublin where lovers gather at the tomb each February 14 to pledge their affection and to renew their marriage vows.

Father Frank O'Gara, the priest in charge of St.Valentine's tomb in Dublin, said that his parishioners were very disturbed by the suggestion that there was more than one tomb for the saint.

But the Scottish Franciscans insist that their bones are genuine, as does Terni, a town northwest of Rome where the saint was born, which also claims to have his remains.

Father Peter Hall, of the Blessed John Duns Scotus church in the Gorbals, said that the bones were given to Scotland by Stephan Potran, a wealthy Roman Catholic from France who, as Commissary of the Holy Land, was entrusted with many important religious relics.

But Dublin cites a letter from the Vatican as its proof of ownership. The letter, written in January 1836, states that Pope Gregory XVI ordered that the body of St.Valentine be removed from the Roman cemetery of St.Hippolytus and sent to Dublin.

The letter, which accompanied the body, said that the remains of St.Valentine were sent "in a wooden case covered with painted paper, well closed, tied with a red silk ribbon and sealed with our seals". The Pope made Dublin a gift of the remains of St.Valentine, who was reputedly killed in 269, after a visit to Rome in 1835 by an Irish Carmelite priest, Father John Spratt, who impressed the Vatican with his oratory.

Father Hall suggested that all the remains were genuine as Rome often divided relics into different sections for distribution. He said that the Scottish and Irish priests should meet to resolve the ownership debate.

"It possibly means that at the end of the day we all have remains of St.Valentine. We will have to sit down together to compare notes," he said.

BLATANT ANTI-PROTESTANT SECTARIANISM EXPOSED

SECTARIAN ATTACK ON SUNDAY SCHOOL CHILDREN

A busload of 50 children   - some as young as two - coming home from a Sunday School trip, were attacked by a tricolour-waving mob in Belfast last night. The children, 18 parents and four teachers from Ballygomartin Presbyterian Church, and Glencairn City Mission, were returning from Portrush, when the mob appeared at the top of the Crumlin Road.

"The mob came from nowhere, and savagely attacked the bus from the grounds of the Holy Cross chapel," said church elder, Wesley McCreedy.

"The driver shouted to everyone to get down, a couple of boys threw younger ones onto the floor, and mothers - some with wee ones in their  arms - were crying. The driver took a chance, and drove against the traffic, and onto the footpath to get away from them. If it hadn't been for him, we   would have had a fatality on  our hands."

Mr McCreedy said he had contacted clergy at the Holy Cross, to complain, and was also in touch with the RUC.

"There were no police on the ground at all," said a furious Mr McCreedy. "The children were in hysterics. This was a blatant, vicious sectarian attack, and there was no-one to help us."

SUNDAY LIFE, MAY 30, 1999

AGAIN, WE ASK, WHAT FREEDOM WOULD PROTESTANTS HAVE IN A UNITED IRELAND?

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