Paisley

The Rev. Ian Paisley

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Irish Cardinal Sean Brady had paid tribute to a controversial Protestant firebrand-turned-peacemaker who once heckled St. John Paul II as the “antichrist.”

The Rev. Ian Paisley, 88, who served as first minister in the cross-community power-sharing government in Northern Ireland from 2007 to 2008, died Sept. 12 and was buried after a private family funeral Sept. 15.

Rev. Paisley initially resisted calls to share power with Northern Ireland’s Catholic minority. He denounced Catholics as “vermin” and was criticized when he claimed that Catholic churches that had been destroyed in sectarian arson attacks had, in fact, burned to the ground because they had been storing explosives for paramilitary use.

Cardinal Sean Brady, who met with him in 2006, told Ireland’s RTE radio that, without the Rev. Paisley, “peace would not have been delivered.”

Cardinal Brady emphasized that, through the years, Rev. Paisley had “moved” from a position where he opposed civil rights for Catholics to one where he was willing to enter a power-sharing government with representatives of the Catholic community, including Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army.

“That is the point—he moved,” said Cardinal Brady, recently retired as archbishop of Armagh, Northern Ireland. “He was an important player in public life in Northern Ireland for 50 years, and without him peace would not have been delivered, that is my conviction.”

As well as being a political leader, Rev. Paisley founded his own denomination, the Free Presbyterian Church, in 1951. He was bitterly opposed to ecumenism and denounced fellow Protestants for entering dialogue with the Catholic Church.

Rev. Paisley led opposition to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which brought an end to 30 years of sectarian conflict in the region. However, by 2003, his Democratic Unionist Party had become the largest political bloc in Northern Ireland, and he began making contact with the Irish and British governments in a bid to make a deal.

This led to a 2006 accord, known as the St. Andrew’s Agreement, in which Rev. Paisley agreed to share power if Sinn Fein would give unequivocal support for policing and the judiciary. —CNS

The Rev. Ian Paisley