Below is an essay written by Victoria Amelina, who was killed by a Russian missile in Kramatorsk. It is from the Guardian.
It is a wonderful piece of writing, the simplicity of it, the observations, the feelings conveyed and all so easily done. Imagine being able to write like Victoria Amelina. And then there is her honesty.
To think that this woman has been killed by a Russian missile fired from afar, it is shocking. It is barbaric.
The content below is an excerpt from the current issue of The Tablet.
In the life of the Catholic Church it is understood that there is a referee who can blow the whistle when one of the players has strayed offside. But a good referee’s instinct is to proceed with humility and caution, and to prefer a quiet word of warning to sending players off the field of play. Pope Francis has appointed a new referee to take charge of the game of theological football – and has instructed him to exercise restraint before doling out red cards. In View from RomeChristopher Lamb writes that the appointment of his fellow Argentinian, Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández, as the leader of the doctrine office and his call for a total overhaul of how the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith does business has set off an ecclesial earthquake. The Pope told Archbishop Fernández that “at other times” his predecessors “came to use immoral methods, when, rather than promoting theological knowledge, possible doctrinal errors were pursued”. As we write in our leader this week, it will have escaped no-one’s notice that from 1985 to 2005 the man with the whistle was one Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later to become Francis’ immediate predecessor as Pope Benedict XVI.
There are occasions when the fundamentals of the Church’s teaching need to be protected: in 1953 the Holy Office excommunicated Fr Leonard Feeney, who taught that only Catholics baptised with water can go to heaven. Everyone else would go to Hell when they died. Sometimes the referee has to take the whistle out of their pocket. But the theological conversation has its own internal self-correcting mechanism. Badly flawed reasoning and thoroughly bad ideas are exposed by other theologians and fall out of favour. The good referee leans towards letting the game flow.
In these days of the Tubridy saga, the loaned car, the flip-flops, incompetent managers and the importance and reverence we give to so-called talented people it’s worth remembering the wise words of Charles De Gaulle:
“The cemeteries are full of indispensable men."
How history, at least aspects of history, weave a strange web through time.
On this day, July 5, 1941 the German Army reached the Dnieper river, the river that is in our newspapers every day because of the Russia Ukraine war.
And two years later, this time July 5, 1943 the biggest ever tank battle in history to place in the Soviet Union in Kursk. To the surprise of the Germans they were defeated by the Red Army.
Another two years on, July 5, 1945 the UK held its first general election in 10 years, which was won by the Labour Party and Clement Attlee is elected prime minister.
In Paris on July 5, 1946 Micheline Bernardini modelled the first modern bikini at a swimming pool in Paris.
Today there are celebrations across the United Kingdom to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the National Health Service on July 5, 1948.
Europe was at last breathing a sigh of relief after the evils of war.
This week’s Mediahuis/INM Irish regional newspapers’ column
Michael Commane
Former UK cabinet minister, Brexiteer and Boris Johnson supporter, Nadine Dorries gave an interview last month to Financial Times chief features writer, Henry Mance.
I put my hands up and admit that I’m no fan of Ms Dorries but she made some interesting comments in the interview. She’s a Liverpudlian of Irish background and is an author, whose books have reached the dizzying heights of three million sales. She attributes her writing success to her Irishness: ‘There is something in the Irish DNA that makes people write in a way that works.’
During her luncheon interview with Mance she said that the NHS could pay nurses more if it paid management consultants less. That was probably the highlight of her interview for me. I was surprised that a Tory MP would express such a sentiment. But it makes great sense.
Let’s expand on that idea. Why should some people earn indecent sums of money while there are others on the breadline? How can someone who has millions ever understand or appreciate the difficulties of those who have nothing. Why do we constantly give such obeisance to the rich and powerful? It happens all across society.
We give people names and reputations and I’m forever mystified why we place them on such pedestals.
We hold people with great wealth in awe. I don’t for a moment want to be disrespectful but I found the amount of news coverage that was given to the five people who lost their lives in the submersible completely disproportionate to the news given to the hundreds of poor people who lose their lives in rickety boats in the Mediterranean. Imagine if a tenth of the money spent in attempting to rescue the five people in the submersible were spent trying to solve the problems of those fleeing from their homeland? But that’s not the way the world works. Why not?
I’m not for a moment suggesting that we should all be paid the same or that we are all of equal ability but we have lost the run of ourselves when it comes to bowing and scraping to those we have placed in top jobs. We are forever saying it, no one is indispensable.
Why do we allow ourselves to be bullied? Why are we so slow to speak out and criticise our bosses when we know they are not doing their jobs as they should. In short, why is the world so full of sycophants? And it’s right across society, in every nook and cranny.
Only last week I discovered in an article I read in the English Catholic weekly, The Tablet that according to Canon Law a priest may not whistleblow against his bishop. How absurd is that?
It’s so easy to complain and criticise away from the bosses and the rich. Why don’t we have the courage and the wisdom to speak face-to-face with those who manage.
We should never allow anyone to patronise us. I believe there is a crying need for open and honest discussion between the managed and those who manage. There is far too much insincerity, far too much game-playing. We are living in fragile times, in a time where there is urgent need for honest talk.
Last year 9,610 people were before the courts for failing to pay their television licence.
How many TV licence dodgers are there in the State?
What happens next year? Will the citizens be asked again to pay for rugby tickets, trips to far-off lands, chauffeur driven limousines?
Might the management in RTÉ end up before the courts?
This is long but well worth a read. A shocking story of human behaviour. It is from The Irish Times yesterday.
As the overnight sleeper from Kyiv clanks into Zaporizhzhia, a Cossack march erupts from the train station’s crackly loudspeakers, reminding passengers that this city in southeastern Ukraine was a storied stronghold of the nation’s warrior caste.
Other first impressions are also telling: a factory chimney towers over the train tracks, but like much of Zaporizhzhia’s heavy industry, the site it serves now appears to be idle; and police guarding the exit to the station check the passports of all new arrivals, and take photographs of many, before letting them disperse into a city that is just 50km from the front line of Ukraine’s war with Russia.
“Yesterday was quiet, the day before was loud,” taxi driver Anton says as he pulls out of the car park, using the Ukrainian shorthand for light and heavy spells of the Russian shelling and missile fire that has badly damaged Zaporizhzhia and nearby towns and villages.
“The problem yesterday was the stench in the city,” he adds with a grimace. “It smelled like something had died.”
What is dying is the huge Kakhovka reservoir, much of the life in its dwindling waters and along its rapidly drying banks, and the human activity that it fostered – from farming, shipping and industry that are mainstays of the region’s economy, to the simple pleasures of swimming, fishing and strolling on its shores that generations of locals took for granted.
When the Kakhovka dam south of Zaporizhzhia collapsed on June 6th, almost certainly due to an explosion caused by Russian troops occupying the site, it sent 18 billion cubic metres of water surging down the Dnipro river to the Black Sea, flooding swathes of the Kherson region, killing dozens – maybe hundreds – of people and forcing thousands to flee.
Upstream, the Kakhovka reservoir that covered more than 2,000sq km started to drain away, the Dnipro and its tributaries in Zaporizhzhia and neighbouring villages began to fall, and more and more bare riverbed – littered with dead fish and molluscs and potentially riddled with heavy metals and other toxins – was exposed to a scorching summer sun.
“This was a place that people came to walk and fish and swim; somewhere they enjoyed spending time in the middle of their city,” says Tetiana Zhavzharova, director of Zaporizhzhia- based environmental group Ekosens, looking out at a vast expanse of bare, rutted earth where the Dnipro flowed until the dam was destroyed.
“The Dnipro was rich with fish. Some species, like the sturgeon, died when it was dammed in the Soviet days, but more common types lived here,” says Zhavzharova, who has photographs on her phone of friends swimming in the river just days before the disaster.
Now trees and reeds that were partly submerged stand high and dry, boats lie beached and people walking on the riverbed appear dwarfed and bewildered by the moonscape as they try in vain to reach the distant, glinting remains of the river.
“It’s just horrific,” says local woman Iryna, as her daughter Olha ignores her warnings and strides out across the riverbed until it becomes too soft to hold her and she sinks up to her thighs in thick mud.
“We used to swim here as kids. And look what’s happened to the boats over there. My grandad used to keep a boat here. Everything is dying, we’ve watched it disappearing. The water is just going further and further away and it’s awful,” she adds. “Water transport will die, too; the barges that carried grain and other cargo along the river, and the tourist boats. It’s all over.”
Ukrainians revere the Dnipro, Europe’s fourth-longest river, but it has long been abused by industry and agriculture under Soviet rule and, since 1991, governments of independent Ukraine.
The Soviets used the mineral and water resources of southeastern Ukraine to develop sprawling metal, chemical and engineering works, which disgorged much of their waste into a river that was being tamed by the construction of a series of towering dams and hydroelectric power stations, and tapped by irrigation networks to water collective farms.
“There are industrial centres all along the river – Zaporizhzhia, Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro, Kremenchuk, Kyiv. And for decades, until water cleaning systems were introduced in the 1960s and 1970s, they just discharged industrial and household waste into the river. So large deposits of all this built up on the riverbed. That’s partly why it smells like this,” Zhavzharova says, as a hot wind off the southern steppe spreads the putrid stench through the city.
The immense volume of the Kakhovka reservoir diluted people’s concerns about possible contact with pollution, whether when swimming, fishing or eating catch from the water, but as acres of silt are exposed, they are increasingly fearful over what it may contain.
“We have very hot summers here and it could reach 70 degrees Celsius on the dry riverbed. There may be heavy metals and other toxins in there, and that dust will be carried on the wind through Zaporizhzhia and into people’s lungs,” warns Zhavzharova.
South of the destroyed dam, landmines and other ordnance from 16 months of full-scale war were dispersed across the flood zone and swept into the Black Sea. Upstream, scientists worry that the radioactive legacy of another disaster – the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear meltdown – could lurk in sediment on the bed of the Dnipro, which north of Kyiv is fed by the Pripyat river that runs beside the now defunct power plant.
“We have talked for years about what is in these deposits on the bottom of the river . . . and now we need to analyse the soil and water to understand quickly what is there and take measures to deal with it,” says Olexiy Angurets, an expert at environmental group Clean Air for Ukraine.
“Are there radionuclides there from the Chernobyl disaster? Will this territory become a dust bowl containing chemicals that will pollute the area?” he asks. “We need the involvement of international experts to understand and deal with this, because it is really an unusual case. Dams have been destroyed before, but the consequences are so huge here that I think very few cases in the world can compare.”
Angurets says it will take months to get a clearer idea of how southeastern Ukraine, and many aspects of life here, will be affected by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.
How will animals and plant life in the river and along its shores, including endangered species, adapt to the crisis? Can new water sources be found for farming and heavy industry? Where will the Dnipro make its new banks now the Kakhovka reservoir is gone?
There are also urgent issues to be addressed, including establishing a sustainable water supply for the 600,000 people of Kryvyi Rih, who have been urged to cut their daily consumption by 40 per cent to avert a bigger water crisis in the height of summer.
The Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, about 50km from the city on the eastern bank of the Dnipro, also relies on the river for water, but experts say its cooling ponds are stable and can meet its needs for now. A sharper fear is that Moscow’s troops could follow up the dam disaster by causing a radiation leak at the plant.
Angurets warns that this combination of factors – the continuing war, constant insecurity and the growing scarcity of water and its impact on households, farming and industry – could prompt people to abandon the region.
“We should at least find a way to get water to people,” he says. “I see this as the main social aspect of the problem. We could see new refugees because of this – up to 1 million people could leave these areas if it is not possible to solve this.”
The crest of the Kushuhum district, south of Zaporizhzhia, includes a prancing horse, crossed sabres and a sturgeon, to reflect the Cossack history and fishing traditions of the three villages that it comprises: Balabyne, Malokaterynivka and Kushuhum itself.
“There’s less and less water in the river, so now the fish and shellfish and algae are dying. That’s why there’s this bad smell. Last night we closed all the windows in the house because of the stink. And then, on top of that, there’s the heat,” explains Viktoria Kryvenko, secretary of Kushuhum council.
“About 18,000 people live in the whole district. Some left when the war began but came back again. I did that. And about 1,700 displaced people are registered here. We get hit by shelling pretty often. Last August a woman in Kushuhum was killed when a missile landed in her garden. And a month ago they hit Malokaterynivka and 170 houses were damaged,” she continues.
Driving through the village, Kryvenko points to a parting between trees and cottages and says: “That’s where the river should be. It was such a nice view before.” Now only a vast expanse of brown mud is visible: “The water’s gone away,” she adds. “We’ve got war and no water.”
The level of the Dnipro and a tributary called the Konka has fallen so far that local irrigation systems are dry, and the little water now flowing through village pipes is only enough to meet the needs of households nearest the shore.
“The water system already struggled to cope with every house having a washing machine. Now when people come home and start washing and watering the vegetables in their gardens, there’s not enough to go around. People near the river can be without water for a few hours, but those in higher streets might not have water for days,” Kryvenko says.
“Volunteers brought us seeds and potatoes to plant, but what’s the point if there’s no water to put on them? We need to drill two new wells and install pumps, but we have to drill deep to reach the water and it’s very expensive for us.”
At what was the water’s edge, but is now a jumble of rocks bordering a vast brown plain dotted with puddles, Lyudmyla Volyk looks out through the heat haze towards the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.
“The Russians are destroying everything. They’ve turned the Kakhovka reservoir into the Kakhovka desert. What if the power station is next? Why is the world scared of them? Why does no one stop them?” says Volyk, the head of Malokaterynivka village, whose daughter is a refugee in Limerick.
“The things we’re living through – when in the middle of night they shell you and you don’t know what to do or where to run; when houses are burning and you could be burned alive just trying to find the door. Four houses were totally destroyed last month when they shelled us,” she recalls of an attack on May 10th that injured eight people.
Volyk and Kryvenko list other atrocities committed by Russia during its invasion, including the torture and murder of civilians in Bucha and Irpin outside Kyiv, and Volyk concludes: “Only animals could do things like this. I just want Russia to collapse and disappear forever.”
Kryvenko looks out at the wasteland where the Dnipro once flowed and says: “That was all water. It was so beautiful and looked like the sea, and now it’s a desert. It tears at your soul to look at it.”
This is a powerful interview with Evgenia Kara-Murza, the wife of Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence in Russia for high treason.
In the midst of all the deceit, corruption and intrigue in a world that seems so uncertain, angry too, there are people like the Kara-Murzas.
Watching the unfolding shenanigans of the RTÉ affair is it possible that the RTÉ management might have been advised by the clerical Catholic Church?
The alleged absolute power, control and secrecy of the director general, Dee Forbes has parallels/similarities with the clerical world.
In conversation with two men yesterday the following stories came to light.
An elderly man was asked if he were a farmer. He replied: “I don’t have a flowerpot”.
The other person recalled a story he was told by a former bus conductor: “The conductor had an altercation with a ‘snooty style’ woman. She told him in no uncertain terms that it was she who paid his wages. He looked at her, placed his hand gently on her shoulder and gently said: 'Madam I’ve wanted to have had a chat with you for a long time’."
Is there anything as good as wit?
Below is The Irishman’s Diary from The Irish Times yesterday. The column is written by Derek Scally, the newspaper’s correspondent in Berlin.
It’s an interesting story and makes for a good read. The last three words ring loud: “...beware the beginnings."
The first meeting of Sean Lester with Edward O’Rourke reads like something from a Shaw comedy of manners. In his diary for 1934, Lester, a Protestant Irish diplomat, described the arrival into his room of a bespectacled local bishop waving an Irish magazine and coughing his way through an unfamiliar Irish cigarette.
It was 1934 and both were powerful anti-fascist voices in what is today’s Gdansk, Poland’s Baltic port city. Back then it was the Free City of Danzig, an independent city-state with a German majority population that, in the post-1918 order, was administered by the League of Nations.
As the league’s ninth – and penultimate – High Commissioner from 1934, Lester was an outspoken critic of the creeping takeover by the Nazis, determined to take back control of the territory. Lester’s warnings that Danzig was a Nazi test case for the rest of Europe – with terrible consequences likely for the continent’s Jewish population – went unheeded and the Nazis forced him from office after just two years.
That left Edward O’Rourke, in 1937, among the last voices to warn the outside world of the growing risks building in Danzig.
Perhaps his own family background left him attuned to their plight. O’Rourke was a Russian count whose noble family had fled Ireland in the 17th century to the continent and earned a reputation fighting with the French and Russian military before settling in a large landed estate near Minsk, capital of today’s Belarus.
Born there in 1876, O’Rourke was educated at a Jesuit boarding school before studying law in Switzerland and economics and theology in Innsbruck. A polyglot who spoke eight languages, he was ordained at 31, became Bishop of Riga in 1918 aged just 42, and apostolic administrator to the Free City of Danzig in 1922.
Three years later, O’Rourke became the first bishop of the newly created diocese of Danzig’s 119,000 Catholics. From his seat in the striking late-16th-century Oliva cathedral, he promised his flock: “I want nothing but to serve you with all my strength, to share joy and sorrow with you.”
His new role was as much political as pastoral, with the majority German population fearing what their separation from the rest of the Reich meant for their future. While O’Rourke reportedly sympathised initially with their fears of a creeping Polish takeover, the bishop’s thinking began to shift after the Danzig Nazi Party took control of the city-state senate in 1933.
As Gdansk-based Irish historian Paul McNamara, an expert on the period, puts it: “With the church now facing persecution by an external enemy, internal ethnic divisions in were set aside and the attitude of Bishop O’Rourke and part of the German-speaking clergy became more favourable towards the Polish community.”
It was at this point that he made contact with Sean Lester. Despite differences in faith – and only French as a common language of communication – the aristocrat cleric and the Irish diplomat shared a growing concern for what the Nazis would do to Europe when they were finished with Danzig.
As Bishop of Danzig, O’Rourke wrote 22 pastoral letters. His 1920s concerns about the “spiritual dangers” of atheist socialism yielded in the 1930s to all-out attacks on a profane “new religion born of the Germanic spirit” that seeks to reframe Jesus Christ – a Jew –as a “son illegitimate and stigmatised as a poisoner of the Germanic race”.
“The cross from Golgotha should disappear, they say, from our towers; the cross of Odin should stand as a sign of victory,” he added. True Catholics, he warned, “cannot accept as true the preached slogans ... of blood and race” because they mark a “false approach, contrary to Catholic teaching”.
In Danzig, O’Rourke faced vicious attacks for his public protest at the Nazi takeover of Catholic schools and youth groups. But his ability to intervene in political affairs – and fight back against attacks – were undermined when Rome agreed to apply to Danzig its concordat with Germany. Ratified in September 1933 it forbade clerics from adopting overtly political roles.
Though O’Rourke finally gave up on Danzig – the Holy See released him from his role in June 1938 – he didn’t give up on Poland. He moved to the western city of Poznan and, two years later, renounced his Danzig citizenship to become a Polish citizen. Fleeing the war to Rome, he died there 80 years ago today.
His remains were reinterred in Gdansk’s Oliva Cathedral in 1972. Such a gesture, at the height of the cold war, was a huge honour from a country that felt first the full cost of Nazi terror, occupation and industrialised murder.
As the far right rises again, and a war rages on its eastern flank, Edward O’Rourke’s central warning to Europe then is just as relevant today: beware the beginnings.
This week’s Mediahuis/INM Irish regional newspapers’ column
Michael Commane
The BBC has reported that the Russians have lost at least 25,000 soldiers in Ukraine, many of those killed were poorly trained and prisoners, who had been promised freedom - ‘some freedom’. Graves are appearing all over Russia but mainly east of the Ural Mountains, in far off places from Moscow and European Russia.
We never hear figures of how many Ukrainian soldiers have been killed but they too have high losses. And besides the heaps of dead bodies, think of the thousands who have lost arms and legs, those blinded.
What must it be like to get sick in a dirty trench? What must it be like for parents, their relatives and friends? Russians and Ukrainians killing one another, people they don’t know.
In different circumstances they might well be chatting with one another, having a coffee or drinking beer, talking about their families, about the latest book they are reading or having a discussion about how the current qualifying Uefa Euro 2024 qualifying games are going. But none of that. They are murdering one another at the behest of a 72-year-old, who lives in spectacular luxury.
It was Vladimir Putin who decided to invade Ukraine, just as it was Adolf Hitler who decided to invade Poland.
All wars are complicated and there are myriad reasons that ignites the initial spark that sets it all aflame. But once the fire takes off the cruelty and savagery that ensues is beyond words.
It’s the end of June, the sun shines on Europe, a time for people to enjoy themselves, especially for young people to be able to release their energies under blues skies.
This summer far too many young people are being killed and maimed for life. The story is gradually but surely disappearing off the front pages of our newspapers and the lead items on our television bulletins. And all the time the share price of the armaments industry is soaring. They are having a field day.
I was reminded of the tragedy of the war in Ukraine last week having read a poem by American poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019).
The poem is called The Summer Day. She writes about the nature that is all about us, she asks who made the swan and the grasshopper. And then she writes this: ‘I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down/into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass/how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,/which is what I have been doing all day./Tell me, what else should I have done?/Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?/Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild precious life?’
Oliver paints a picture of wild abandon, a world where young people enjoy the now and dream about their futures. And that’s what it should be. Then think of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers these summer days maiming and killing one another.
The Russians, forced to go to war because of the capricious will of Putin when they should be enjoying the summer days, and the Ukrainians defending their country, when they should be relaxing and working in the fields of Europe’s breadbasket.
Below is an article by Catherine Pepinster in the current issue of The Tablet. Ms Pepinster is a former editor of The Tablet.
It makes for an interesting read. It is a powerful example of the damage that clericalism does to the church.
St Mary’s Cathedral in Newcastle is one of Augustus Pugin’s great masterpieces. Built with the halfpenny subscriptions of the Tyneside Catholic poor – among them migrants from Ireland who had flocked to the city for work in its docks, shipbuilding yards and mines – it symbolised the hope that the Church would return to its pre- Reformation glory in the north of England.
On 25 March 2019 it was filled to overflowing when bishops from England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland, including the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, the clergy of the Congregation of the Oratory of St Philip Neri, the mayors, civic leaders and the great and the good of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Darlington and Hartlepool heard the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Edward Adams, read out the mandate from Pope Francis con- firming that Robert Byrne, auxiliary bishop of Birmingham, was the new diocesan bishop.
The Archbishop of Liverpool, Malcolm McMahon, presented the new bishop to the dean of the cathedral, Fr Dermott Donnelly, representing the clergy and laity of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle. Then those at the installation Mass heard from the new bishop himself, talking, appropriately on that Feast of the Annunciation, of new beginnings. He spoke of being humbled by the task before him, of coming to Newcastle “over-awed and with some trepidation”. “We are on a journey of faith,” he told his new flock. “Like any journey we learn as we walk on our way together.”
If anybody wondered that day why an Oratorian with absolutely no links to the north east had been chosen to lead the Church in one of the poorest parts of Britain, and had managed to secure papal, episcopal and civic endorsement, they stayed quiet. But it did not take long for doubts to emerge about how Byrne had been included in the terna – the list of three names submitted to Rome as epis- copal contenders – let alone how he had emerged as the top candidate.
Byrne himself seemed lonely, isolated and uncomfortable in his new home. He seemed uninterested in learning what Geordie Catholics liked and loved. Among their loves was the cathedral dean, Dermott Donnelly, brother of Declan, one half of the TV duo Ant and Dec. Fr Donnelly had developed an impressive youth ministry in the diocese and had made the cathedral a place of hospitality for all, includ- ing the homeless. But within six months Byrne cast him aside; Fr Donnelly died last year at the age of 55, following a short illness. In his place, Byrne had installed Canon Michael McCoy, despite concerns raised by senior priests and safeguarding experts. It was a foolish decision.
Byrne also dismayed people with his decision to move the bishop’s house to a far more affluent neighbourhood and to spend considerable sums on refurbishment. But possibly the most disastrous move of all was another decision to ignore advice from his safeguarding team. Soon after arriving in Newcastle, Byrne informed the diocesan safeguarding officer that he wanted a close friend, Fr Timothy Gardner, to move in with him in his home. He told her he was lonely and isolated. Given that Gardner was a regis- tered sex offender with a previous conviction for possession of child pornography, this was viewed as unwise. Yet soon after, Fr Gardner started to visit, staying overnight. He had his own set of keys to the house.
The diocesan safeguarding co-ordinator at the time, Angie Richardson, says: “The key safeguarding issue was Robert Byrne. [His predecessor] Bishop Seamus Cunningham was always respectful of safeguarding expertise. But this was different. Bishop Byrne did not take advice and details of the problems with Michael McCoy were in the files.” Richardson also warned Byrne about associating with a sex offender. “He raised having someone stay in his house the first time I met him but I knew about Gardner so I told him it was unwise.” She also advised against Byrne finding Gardner a job in the diocesan archives, where he might have seen sensitive material.
Within three-and-a-half years of being installed as Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, Robert Byrne quit, saying that his office was “too great a burden”. His episcopacy had led to serious complaints to the nuncio about his conduct, not least how he handled safeguarding matters; to rumours in the diocese about his decisions, his choice of friends and his appointments; to grave concerns about safe- guarding held by both professional safeguarders and by survivors of abuse. Just how serious the situation was is revealed in the report published last week by the Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency (CSSA), which said that there were “serious failures of lead- ership” by Bishop Byrne, including “poor decision-making, inappropriate associations, and ignoring professional safeguarding advice”.
Another inquiry was conducted earlier this year by Archbishop Malcolm McMahon on behalf of the Vatican’s Dicastery of Bishops. It remains secret, but the executive summary published by the archbishop also refers to “errors of judgement”.
Why Bishop Byrne thought it wise to appoint Canon McCoy as dean is mystifying. Not only did he disregard advice from his safeguarding coordinator but the CSSA report makes it clear that his predecessor, Séamus Cunningham, had warned him that there were historic concerns about McCoy’s relationships with teenage boys. But Byrne went ahead. There was further trouble. Rumours swept Newcastle about goings-on in the cathedral during the Covid lockdowns, including allegations of misbe- haviour in both the cathedral and the adjoining residence. Three priests told the diocesan safe- guarding coordinator that there was a culture of drinking in the cathedral. Archbishop McMahon’s report acknowledges that those working in the cathedral during lockdown enjoyed drinking wine together. A report was made to Northumbria Police but they decided to take no action; Byrne was not present at any of these gatherings.
Eighteen months after his appointment as dean, police began investigating Canon McCoy over a historic allegation of abuse. He moved out of the cathedral residence but died four days later. A May 2022 inquest ruled that he had taken his own life.
At some point, the CSSA report says, Bishop Byrne took Fr Gardner to the cathedral where they spent time with Canon McCoy. One witness told The Tablet that “McCoy would go out with Byrne and Gardner for a meal”. It was this kind of association that caused safeguarding alarm bells to ring. Yet the diocesan safeguarding team could do very little: they can give bishops advice but it is not mandatory for bishops to take it. This flaw in the Catholic safeguarding system is one that profoundly concerns both members of the laity and the CSSA.
Also deeply worrying is the time it takes for safeguarding issues to be dealt with. The Hexham and Newcastle safeguarding officer spoke to Robert Byrne about Fr McCoy and Fr Gardner within six months of his installation as bishop. By September 2021, when Fr McCoy took his own life, the trustees of the diocese had commissioned an internal investigation from its safeguarding chair. In 2022, the CSSA decided it wanted its own report. Byrne resigned in December, following the intervention of the nuncio, who had also been alerted to problems by a whistleblower. The interim CSSA chief executive, Steve Ashley, met the key Hexham and Newcastle whistleblower the same month and then Archbishop Malcolm McMahon, by then apostolic administrator of Hexham and Newcastle, on 10 January this year. Extraordinarily, Ashley, who had previously been vice-chair of the CSSA, said he “was unaware of what was going on in Hexham and Newcastle” until he took over the top job in October 2022, when he was finally briefed about it.
Mary Varley, a member of the lay organisation Root & Branch, says that the delay of over three years, from alarm bells ringing with the safeguarding officer in September 2019 to Byrne’s resignation in December 2022, is unacceptable.
“This is the big question: why should it take so long for Byrne to go?” she says. “The delay meant there were potential risks to children.” Other problems in safeguarding across the Church in England and Wales have emerged from the CSSA inquiry. It recommends there should be a policy specifically for clergy whistleblowers. As Ashley points out, at present, canon law prevents whistleblowing by a priest about a bishop. But the CSSA can only recommend: it’s down to the English and Welsh bishops to lobby Rome to change canon law. The CSSA, however, can help whistleblowers who are lay people. Ashley and CSSA chair Nazir Afzal are investigating how more support could be offered to the laity.
The CSSA also calls for the Bishops’ Conference to look at how complaints can be dealt with if a bishop does not implement what his safeguarding team advises. “There is no escalation process. There is no point in having advice if the bishop does not take it.
Newcastle shows there are wider structural issues for the Church,” Mr Afzal says. The experience of offering counsel and having it ignored made safeguarding co-ordinator Angie Richardson’s position untenable. As Steve Ashley points out: “We had a situation in Hexham and Newcastle where a whistleblowing member of staff felt they had no alternative but to resign.”
The CSSA is now going to discuss with the bishops whether a third party should be involved when safeguarders and bishops are unable to reach an agreement.
Another issue is the way in which priests convicted of crimes are dealt with by the Church. The Dominican Order, to which Fr Gardner belongs, asked Rome to laicise him in 2015, but the request was turned down.
Ashley calls this “a disgraceful decision” but, again, it is out of the CSSA’s hands. Fr Gardner has now been charged with further criminal offences regarding children following an investigation by Northumbria Police.
Steve Ashley and Nazir Afzal are also calling for more transparency in the appointment of bishops.
That matters took such a wrong turn so soon after Byrne’s installation has caused many people to ask why he was appointed. Maggie Mathews, of Stolen Lives, which represents survivors, says: “Are the same people who recommended Bishop Byrne now recommending others to the episcopacy? What about their judgement? We should have a transparent system, with a proper panel, including survivors of abuse and other laity, assessing can- didates.”
People who have spoken to The Tablet say they voiced concerns about Robert Byrne’s judgement as long ago as the 1970s. But any change to the appointment of bishops will depend on ... bishops.
No amount of calls for transparency from the CSSA or the laity will change the system. “What would be heartening,” says Mary Varley, “would be to see the English and Welsh bishops lobbying their colleagues to get this system changed.” Steve Ashley is convinced that this is one of the most critical issues for the Church today. “We are asking for a change in the process,” he said. “To show some degree of transparency is critical if the Church wants to gain the trust of people again.” Just how damaging this process has been is clear from one Tynesider, who says: “The system we have got is that the bishops basically mark their own homework. And that’s not good enough”.
Last week, the appointment of a new bishop for Hexham and Newcastle was announced. In his first pastoral letter to the diocese, Stephen Wright pledged to “model best practice in safeguarding matters in my personal conduct and by following the national safeguarding policies,” and committed himself to only making appointments in the diocese after consultation with the safeguarding team – a promise that the CSSA welcomes.
The new bishop admits to having accepted his appointment with a “nervous joy”. After the traumas they have endured in the last few years, it would be entirely understandable if his flock felt the same.
Might those nerves – and the anxieties now felt by all Catholics when a new bishop is appointed – be assuaged if they could be confident that the Church was committed to a more convincing and transparent appointments process?
Former UK cabinet minister and Boris Johnson supporter, Nadine Dorries in an interview in the Financial Times Weekend said: “I’m Liverpool Irish. There is something in the Irish DNA that makes people write in a way that works.”
She is an author, selling three million copies.
Elsewhere in the interview with the FT’s chief features writer, Henry Mance, Dorries says that the NHS could pay nurses more if it paid management consultants less.
Nothing wrong with those sentiments from a woman who supports Johnson and Brexit.
She recounts being abused by a Catholic priest.
On the civil service she says: “Everything comes down to leadership... My experience of the civil service is that, if you value it and work with it, it works like nothing else."
Mance concludes that Dorries blurs fact and fiction so easily that he is not even sure she notices it.
Below is a press release from the Archdiocese of Dublin issued on Thursday, June 22.
The Archdiocese of Dublin is undergoing a process of pastoral renewal, which was commenced by Archbishop Dermot Farrell shortly after his appointment, under the title Building Hope – a new approach to pastoral planning. Based on a synodal process of engagement with parish communities, it is well advanced. New partnerships of parishes have been established, new supports for parish pastoral councils have been developed, and new training and development programmes have been introduced.
In that context, the archbishop has been considering how the presence of the church in the wider community can be strengthened, both for outreach to the many people who have no established links with either the church or an individual parish, and as a point of encounter between the church and the wider culture. In most major cities, the cathedral church and other major churches act as a focal point for that mission and encounter.
Dublin does not have a cathedral: St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral was built nearly 200 years ago to provide a focal point for the archdiocese, but it was always envisaged that at some point a cathedral building would be required that had both the space and the facilities to accommodate the full range of diocesan liturgical and pastoral ministry. For a variety of reasons that never happened, but the limitations of the St Mary’s building and complex remain.
Meanwhile, the city has changed and developed. While St Mary’s is located in an area undergoing renewal and development, on the south side of the Liffey recent and planned commercial and residential development have created a whole new dimension of city life. St Andrew’s Church, Westland Row, which was built shortly after St Mary’s, is well placed to engage with the vibrant residential, commercial and cultural heart of the city.
Having consulted with the council of priests, the archbishop believes that both St Mary’s and St Andrew’s have the capacity to be developed as twin pillars of a renewed pastoral and missionary strategy. It is his desire that Dublin should have a properly designated cathedral and that it should be complemented by a church on the other side of the Liffey whose status and dignity are formally recognised and supported. For logistical reasons, there are strong grounds for considering that St Andrew’s might better serve the cathedral function, with St Mary’s raised to the dignity of a basilica.
In order to advance the analysis of these options and prepare a specific proposal (which will ultimately require approval by the authorities in Rome) the archbishop is establishing a project group which will include representatives of both St Mary’s and St Andrew’s Parishes to develop proposals in the light of a synodal process of engagement and dialogue, supported by expert and technical advice. The project group will examine the physical and structural aspects of this proposal, the pastoral and programme requirements and opportunities on both sites, the community and parish dimension, including social, engagement and community service, and the financial and other resource implications.
The archbishop will be communicating the details of this project process over the coming weeks and he envisages that proposals will be presented by the project group for decision before the end of the current year.
Over the last few days there has been much talk about price gouging in the hotel industry. No doubt such behaviour happens across all industries from time to time.
Has anyone noticed how expensive air fares are out of Ireland at present?
This week fares to many places within Europe are in the €300/€400 range. At the same time fares between Berlin Brandenburg and Barcelona, and between Alicante and Paris are in the €70s and €20s respectively.
One might argue that we are paying far too little to travel by air if we are genuinely concerned about our carbon footprint.
But besides that, why are fares out of Ireland so expensive? Is there any competition or is it that a cosy cartel is in operation? It would seem so.
On this day, June 22, 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union. It was called Operation Barbarossa.
At least 24 million citizens of the Soviet Union lost their lives in World War ll.
The behaviour of the Germans as they destroyed the cities, towns and villages of Ukraine was savage, notorious. And it must never be forgotten the suffering and brutality Germany unleashed on the people of the Soviet Union. It was a flagrant unprovoked attack on Mother Russia.
The Germans were finally stopped in Stalingrad in February 1943 when the Red Army under Marshal General George Zhukov drove Paulus’ sixth army out of the city on the Volga. The battle lasted six months.
It was the first major defeat for Germany and the significant turning point in World War ll.
Spotted at Dunnes Stores supermarket
The supermarket carpark is regularly dotted with Teslas, Mercedes, BMWs and the occasional bicycle. The sign does add a sense of fun. And might remind all of us not to take ourselves too seriously, irrespective of where we live or what we drive.
This week’s Mediahuis/INM Irish regional newspapers’ column.
Michael Commane
It was approximately 8.35 on Monday morning. I was about to park up my bicycle to attend a meeting at 8.45. And just as I was taking off my bicycle helmet I spotted a woman with a little boy, whom I presumed was her son. He was about 10 years old and on his way to school.
They too were on bicycles. They were looking on the ground for something. Whatever they were looking for was very small as they were both giving great detail to something on the ground. Eventually the woman found it. What was it? A spider. She found it, carefully picked it up with her hands and placed it in a nearby flowerpot. They were both delighted with themselves. We exchanged smiles, they cycled off and I went to my meeting.
I was struck with their gentleness and kindness, their concern for nature. And it was funny too. I could never see myself picking up a spider off the ground while out cycling. But I was greatly inspired by what the woman had done. And I could see from her son that he was so relieved that his mother had come to the rescue of the spider. I can only imagine that little boy is in good hands.
I must have been a small boy when my father said to me that if someone is kind to animals you will find that they are also kind to humans. It has stayed with me all my life and I have seen how right my father was.
Nature is amazing. The older I get, the more in awe I am with the world about us and how it all keeps going. What’s it all about at all?
As I saw that woman find her spider my mind wandered to Columbia, where four children, aged 13, nine, four, and 11 months managed to survive 40 days in the jungle. They survived a plane crash in which their mother and two adults were killed. It is an amazing story.
Many commentators have said that the fact that the children belong to an indigenous community added to their survival skills. However or whatever kept them alive, little 13-year-old Lesly must have done trojan work in keeping herself and her three siblings alive.
The power of nature to keep us alive, to keep things going is really a mystery right in front of our eyes. And it keeps control over us all day and all night. Nature never gives up.
And then I think of what’s happening in Ukraine, the bread basket of Europe. Adults are killing one another. Every day and every night women, men and children are being killed, losing limbs.
Many will be horribly disfigured for the rest of their lives. Children are being separated from their parents. The suffering being inflicted on people is beyond words. And while all that is happening the share price in the armaments industry is soaring as it churns out more and more killing weapons.
I’m scared about the war in Ukraine. How will it end? But when wars happen in far off places I’m not as concerned.
Is everything we do and think controlled by our nerve endings and is it all as complicated and as simple as that?
I’m back thinking of the spider woman and comparing her behaviour to the ongoing brutality in Ukraine.
The mystery of nature is mind-boggling.
Anyone using the relatively new TFI Live app might be able to explain what the word ‘scheduled’ means when it gives the arrival time of a bus at a stop.
The app gives a list of the next buses to arrive and within that time period it also regularly gives the time of a bus arrival with the word ‘scheduled’ under the designated time. Further down all the times are designated scheduled. But the bus time with ‘scheduled' within the nearest times actually never turns up. Just as the designated time arrives the ‘scheduled’ bus disappears and the bus never arrives at the stop.
TFI/NTA guarantees the reply to correspondence within 15 working days. It seems an inordinate length of time. To add to the misery of the travelling public TFI/NTA does not keep its promise in replying within 15 working days.
It would seem TFI/NTA has an unusual understanding of what the word ‘timetable’ means. Press the button timetable and you are given the time of the next bus or train to depart. That is not a timetable.
Navigation across the app is not easy.
The new TFI Live app is not fit for purpose as it is currently designed.
Yesterday Germany remembered June 17, 1953.
Seventy years ago in East Berlin and across the former German Democratic Republic tens of thousands of people took to the streets protesting against poor wages and calling for free elections and German unity.
At lunch time on that fateful day Russian tanks rolled on to the streets of the capital city of the GDR. In the melee that followed 55 people were killed and ‘order' was restored across the GDR..
At a moving ceremony yesterday in Berlin German president Fran-Walter Steinmeier and chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke of the bravery of the people. Scholz referred to the fact that it was the brutality of the Russian tanks that killed the dreams of the East Germans.
Every day with the war in Ukraine both Russian and German tanks recall all that is horrible and worrying about war.
The Thinking Anew column in The Irish Times today
Michael Commane
Shortly after beginning my job as a hospital chaplain a friend suggested I read Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh. I couldn’t put the book down. Henry Marsh was born in 1950, spent his life working as a brain surgeon in London but also helped develop modern neurosurgery in Nepal and Ukraine.
The book has won many awards and I can understand why. He describes his career as a doctor, the good days and the bad days, the mistakes he made and the extraordinary conversations he had with patients, their families and friends. I met a young doctor who worked with him in London. He told me what you see in the book is exactly who the man is.
I’ve just finished his latest book And Finally, written in the spring of 2022, in the months immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It’s more of the same brilliance, describing his encounters and experiences seen through the eyes of a neurosurgeon but there’s a twist in this book.
This time he tells the story from the other side. He has been diagnosed with serious prostate cancer. He has that wonderful ability of writing down in such clear words what’s going through his head when he receives his diagnoses.
Henry Marsh comes across as a complete human being. He has no problems acknowledging his failures and shortcomings. He now looks back on his life, knowing how privileged he has been but also realises the silly things he did, including the occasions he should have given more time to his family.
But there is an overarching theme right across the two books I have read and that is his humanity, his honesty too. I don’t think he ever once mentioned the word but it’s evidently clear that he is a man of great empathy. He made time for his patients. All during his 40-year career as a doctor he made it his business to listen to his patients. And then when he in turn developed cancer, he is so impressed with the medical personnel who show him kindness and empathy.
He stresses the importance of hospitals being built in places which can accommodate gardens and pleasant surroundings for patients. I have seen this in my own work as a hospital chaplain. He wants the very best for his patients, the best technology but always dressed in kindness and empathy.
Reading through tomorrow’s liturgy I was frequently reminded of Henry Marsh. In the entrance antiphon we ask the Lord to hear our voice and not to abandon or forsake us (Psalm 27). And then in the Gospel (Matthew 9: 36 - 10:8) “When Jesus sees the crowds, he feels sorry for them because they were harassed and dejected…” In the second reading (Romans 5: 6 - 11) St Paul talks about the helplessness of people. As I read those words, I could see Henry Marsh engaging with extremely sick people and speaking to them in such a manner giving them solace, comforting them.
In a postscript to And Finally, Marsh writes about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a country he considers his second home.
He phones his friends in Lviv and Kyiv every day. Of course he is worried about them and what the future holds for them. But he knows: “they will fight to the death. I always knew they would. They see no alternative.” Let us hope that it does not come to that.
He insists that we have to be optimistic because if we are not, “then evil will certainly triumph.” The last line of the book is: “I will return.” Marsh does not believe in an afterlife but certainly believes in living this life to the full and helping make it a better place for all of us.
Tomorrow’s Gospel is one of hope, couched in empathy, especially for those who are harassed and dejected. The day we give up on the marginalised, the day we turn our backs on the poor and sick is the day we lose our humanity. And the story of the life of Jesus is all about offering hope, a hope, that we as Christians believe, reaches fulfilment, in some extraordinary way, with God.
