After IRA announcement, archbishop says group must build trust

Published: 2005-07-29

DUBLIN, Ireland (CNS) -- The Irish Republican Army must go beyond ending its armed campaign and work to build trust and inspire confidence, said Archbishop Sean Brady of Armagh, Northern Ireland, head of the Irish Episcopal Conference. Welcoming the July 28 announcement that the IRA had "formally ordered an end to the armed campaign," Archbishop Brady said, "Every word and deed that helps to foster peace is to be welcomed." In 1969, the IRA, which has been outlawed for years, began a campaign of violence prompted in part, it claimed, by the failure of British security forces to protect Catholic neighborhoods in Northern Ireland from attack by Protestant mobs. The organization then went on the offensive with a campaign of assassinations and bombings in Northern Ireland and other parts of Great Britain, so that between 1969 and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 it is generally acknowledged to be responsible for about half of the nearly 3,500 violent deaths that occurred during the period known as the Troubles.

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