Lyra looked so vulnerable.. her face will never leave me
Priest slams New IRA killers as he tells of giving reporter, 29, the last rites
or your son or daughter, to be involved in this stuff ?
“It is vile – and the attempt by the New IRA to excuse Lyra’s murder as an accident in a somehow legitimate attack on the police was vile as well.”
Fr Gormley’s experience on the night of April 18 is still raw, and his eyes flash with tears as he remembers.
He said: “Holy Thursday is the most sacred night of the year. We’d had our period of prayer, remembering Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and afterwards we realised the rioting had started. We told people to go right out of the church on their way home to stay away from the trouble.”
Within an hour Fr Gormley learned a woman had been injured, and he soon got a call from the police asking him to come to hospital.
Lyra’s partner Sara Canning had told officers she was Catholic.
He said: “She felt it was important Lyra was anointed. I was there for two-and-a-half hours thinking about her mother making that terrible journey to find her daughter had been murdered.”
In the weeks that followed the Belfast woman’s murder, Fr Gormley has reflected on what happened.
And while for some the violence appeared to come out of nowhere, for him it may just have flared a few days earlier than expected. r Gormley said: “There was trouble at the marches on Easter Monday last year. I think it would have happened again the same way this year but it began earlier because the police conducted their searches on Holy Thursday.
“Perhaps Lyra wouldn’t have been caught up in it but it would have happened in some way.” Part of Fr
FDERRY YESTERDAY
Gormley’s frustration is at the way youths have been linked to the murder, and to trouble in Creggan.
He said: “Yes, young people have been involved but it’s easy for these people to brainwash our youngsters. “And what is that except child abuse? Anybody who tries to manipulate kids is abusing them, anybody who encourages them to lift a petrol bomb or to riot for some distorted political goal is abusing them.
“I’ve spoken to families whose children have ended up with a criminal record after previous riots and it causes an awful lot of pain. They will face that record every time they apply for a job and the people who led them to it don’t give a damn. “They’re messing up their lives and for what? To create trouble for the police? To pursue what dream?” he priest said the dissidents have let the reputations of young people in the area be tarnished by Lyra’s death. He added: “Young men of 16 or 18, or children at 12 or 13, they do stupid things. But the person who pulled that trigger wasn’t a youngster. “That’s known – or very firmly believed – quite widely. They’ve let young people get caught up in the mess of it and take the blame for the rioting that night.
“The gunman didn’t mean to kill Lyra, OK, but he meant to
TLyra Mckee
kill someone.” And in his challenge to the dissidents, Fr Gormley seems fearless in a way most people aren’t.
He said: “I’m not afraid. Maybe should be more afraid for myself, don’t know.
“But as a good friend said to me, if I don’t speak up about what’s going on what am I here for?
“I was there the night Lyra died and I was there to meet her family. I don’t know if I was any comfort to any one of them but I just hope they knew then that she was a beloved daughter of God. All I’m here for is to assist Christ. He does the work. I just stand out of his road and let him do the rest.”
Fr Gormley is clear there is a way out for everyone involved – if they turn their backs on violence.
He said: “There are many people doing a lot of great work around here. It is not a hopeless place, far from it.
“We need to keep momentum up, and remember the good work that’s been done so far. It’s not too late for people to turn their backs on these things. We’ve overcome worse, and no one is beyond redemption.” I I
People who encourage youths to riot are abusing them
FR JOE GORMLEY