Bishop "Took Nuns for Granted"

Belfast Telegraph
May 20, 2014

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/bishop-took-nuns-for-granted-30289457.html

Sister Brenda McCall from the Sisters of Nazareth arrives at Banbridge Courthouse

A former Catholic bishop has said nuns at the centre of the UK's largest ever public inquiry into institutional child abuse were taken for granted.

Edward Daly, 81, expressed admiration for a religious order caring for thousands of troubled children amid the violence and "abominable" poverty of 1960s Northern Ireland.

The Sisters of Nazareth have apologised for "shocking and harrowing" physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect at two residential homes in Londonderry.

Bishop Daly said in 36 years of ministry he only heard one complaint, from a woman separated from her brothers as a child and sent from a home to Australia, but had no involvement in running the centres.

He said: "They were doing work that needed to be done, that nobody else was doing."

The treatment of young people, orphaned or taken away from their unmarried mothers, in houses run by nuns, brothers or the state is a key concern of an investigation chaired by retired High Court judge Sir Anthony Hart which is being held in Banbridge, Co Down, and was ordered by the powersharing devolved government at Stormont.

It is considering cases between 1922, the foundation of Northern Ireland, and 1995.

Bishop Daly was still a priest when he famously intervened while British paratroopers shot dead 13 innocent civil rights protesters in Derry on Bloody Sunday in January 1972. He waved his bloodied white handkerchief as he tried to lead one victim to safety. The photograph became one of the images of the conflict.

Two years later he was ordained bishop and was to remain so for the rest of the Troubles.

He told the inquiry Derry around the time of the outbreak of the IRA and loyalist conflict in 1969, amid Catholic protests for civil rights like one man one vote, was a place of great suffering.

"It was a culture shock, I had never before experienced poverty of that nature, housing was such abominable standard, overcrowding and all the attendant things that went with that, it was quite shocking frankly."

The former bishop said there was violence every day except Christmas Day for 18 months.