From: Independent.co.uk
**09 January 2002

**See also: "Bishop recalls day that changed both our lives"



Fr Daly in later life

Derry, 1972: trying to help a dying boy, he became an icon of the Troubles. Thirty years on, Fr Edward Daly tells Julia Stuart why he's still trying to lay to rest the ghost of Bloody Sunday

It is one of the most searing images of the Troubles. Bent almost double to avoid the flying bullets, a terrified priest walks in front of four men carrying the slumped form of a teenager who has just been shot. Held aloft in one hand is a bloodied handkerchief – a plea to the soldiers to spare the group as they search for a phone to call an ambulance.

The date was 30 January 1972. By the end of the day it had another name – Bloody Sunday. The bald statistics are ingrained in our collective memory: during a protest march in Londonderry against internment, paratroopers shot dead 13 Catholic civilians and injured 13 others – one of whom later died – in just 11 minutes. It was a pivotal moment in the history of the Northern Ireland conflict. Membership of the IRA swelled. There were 497 deaths that year, making it the bloodiest of the Troubles. The pain and anger provoked that day still linger 30 years later. Precisely what happened that Sunday and why is now the subject of a second public inquiry – and a film, Bloody Sunday, scheduled for a TV airing and cinema release on 1 February.

The priest's act of humanity has since acquired iconic status. Captured by a TV camera crew and flashed round the world, it is still used to symbolise what happened. Many supporters of the protesters were no doubt delighted that the horror of the day had been so poignantly encapsulated. But for the priest, Edward Daly, life has never been the same again, and he often deeply regrets being caught on film.

Today, Fr Daly is sitting in the study of his diocesan home in Derry. He is now 68, and a retired Bishop of Derry. The 1970s sideburns are gone, and the dark hair has turned a soft white. In the corner of the room is an photo frame with a mount discoloured by time. It holds a black-and-white photograph of a young boxer holding his gloved hands under his chin. It is Jackie Duddy, the 17-year-old factory weaver Fr Daly was desperately trying to get to hospital that day, but who died before he got there. The picture was given to him by the teenager's family. "I've had the picture on my desk or near my desk ever since. I feel an affinity to Jackie," says Fr Daly, a gentle, softly-spoken man.

Then a curate, Fr Daly was in the Bogside that Sunday to comfort the elderly, as he did every march, as they routinely led to rioting and the discharge of rubber bullets and CS gas by the Army. That day's protest was one of a series organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. As Fr Daly ran with the crowd away from the advancing paratroopers, drafted in to bolster the Army, he saw a young man – Duddy – suddenly fall beside him. He assumed the lad had been hit by a rubber bullet. It was, in fact, the start of live firing.

"I took cover behind a low wall and observed the situation, and after the gunfire had died down I grabbed out to him and realised he must have been shot and tried to revive him," remembers Fr Daly, who placed his handkerchief inside the boy's shirt to stem the flow of blood. "I realised that he was very seriously injured so I gave him the last rites and some others came out and helped with him. We were in open ground so we made a dash for it and that's when the television cameras caught us.

"I was scared out of my wits. There was gunfire, but one felt there was something you had to do and you just did it. If you paused to think you wouldn't have moved, you know. After we got Jackie out I went back into the area and there was quite a number of dead and injured people, so I administered the last rites to quite a number. I was stunned and very angry."

Fr Daly was equally stunned when he later found that he couldn't leave home without being approached. "It changed my life completely. I lost my anonymity – it was dreadful, dreadful," he says. "Suddenly I was recognised everywhere, and I felt very uncomfortable with that. I think all the other things I did were forgotten. I was involved a lot in the ministry of people in that area, and theatre work, and everything else took second place – I was the priest with the handkerchief and that was it."

He received "threats and abuse" by letter or phone, which continue today. "I received a lot of letters from people critical of me for being critical of the Army, and a lot of abusive letters saying I was a supporter of the IRA, and things like that."

He adds that he was constantly afraid of meeting people who would be angry with him. "I also had letters from people who criticised me for being critical of the IRA, which I was very critical of during my years as a bishop because I felt what they were doing was wrong. It still happens today, now and again. Some people who resent maybe the money being spent on the Bloody Sunday tribunal, or resent the whole investigation, they would write a letter to me and say so, saying that the Army did the right thing and 'Why don't you shut up about this sort of thing, nobody wants to know about it, it was 30 years ago.'"

More shocking still was the crisis of faith Fr Daly experienced shortly after Bloody Sunday as the violence escalated. That year there were at least 50 deaths in Derry due to the conflict. One traumatic duty several months later was accompanying a father to view the remains of his son in the morgue. A Provisional IRA member, the young man had been killed while assembling a bomb. Only his buttocks remained, clad in red underpants.

Four months before Bloody Sunday, 14-year-old Annette McGavigan was shot in the head, caught in crossfire between the Provisional IRA and the Army as she ate an ice-cream. Fr Daly administered the last rites, and had the dreadful task of informing her parents. "I was called out to a number of incidents of people who were murdered – civilians, soldiers and policemen – to whom I administered the last rites. When you have seen people lying dead on the street, and you've seen what a high-velocity bullet does to a person, or you've been at the scene of a bombing immediately after, it does have a very considerable impact on you," he says, sighing loudly.

"I became unhappy generally with life as a whole, with this situation that one found oneself trapped in, with all the misery and human suffering, and consoling people who were bereaved – endlessly – and just seeing the sheer cruelty of one human being to another. You felt so helpless with all this obscenity going on around you, the taking of life, the destruction of homes and businesses and jobs. The way people became brutalised by the whole thing just appalled me. I think I was feeling disillusioned with humanity and with my faith. It lasted for several months."

In July 1973, he left Derry to work as a religious adviser in Dublin for the television channel RTE. "I think it was an escape from the immediate situation, and an escape that I think was very important for me. I wonder what would have happened if I had stayed on. I just don't know."

The following year he was appointed Bishop of Derry, a position he is "quite certain" he would not have been given had it not been for his role during Bloody Sunday. "It threw me into prominence," he explains, adding that he often feels uncomfortable at having been given the job for that reason. Fr Daly retired as Bishop in 1993 after suffering a stroke. He is now a hospice chaplain.

He has been a prominent witness at both inquiries into Bloody Sunday. The first, by the Chief Justice at the time, Lord Widgery, produced a much criticised report 11 weeks after the shootings. It exonerated the soldiers, finding that they had come under attack from gunmen and bombers. "He found the guilty innocent, and the innocent guilty," says Fr Daly. "It was the second atrocity. I felt very let down."

In January 1998, Tony Blair announced plans for a fresh inquiry as new evidence had come to light. The tribunal, under Lord Saville of Newdigate, opened the following April at Derry's Guildhall. It is expected to finish next year, at the earliest.

At both tribunals Fr Daly's evidence included the fact that he saw a civilian gunman – "which didn't exactly make you the most popular person in town. People would have preferred if we'd forget about that," he says. He has great hope for the outcome of the Saville inquiry. "The questioning was very firm, but very, very fair, I thought," says Fr Daly, who found the experience emotionally exhausting. "I'm impressed by the diligence and detail in which the whole matter is being examined. The tribunal is very important to the families of those involved because not only were their sons murdered, but also there was a shadow cast on them by Lord Widgery, and I think that's got to be cleared. He expressed doubts as to whether they were innocent or not."

Fr Daly is, however, dismayed that the members of the Parachute Regiment succeeded in their appeal against a summons to attend the tribunal in person. "I have no anger against them, that disappeared long ago. I have no anxiety to see them prosecuted or anything like that. I simply want them to say why they did what they did."

Fr Daly also saw his hanky again, still with the tag bearing the name Fr E Daly in the corner. It was brought to the tribunal by Kay Duddy, Jackie's sister. The hanky had arrived at the hospital under Jackie's shirt, and was washed and returned to the Duddy family with his clothes. "It's been like a comfort blanket to me," says Ms Duddy, 45, who still lives in Derry. "It's always with me. It's lovely for us to know that Bishop Daly was with Jackie in his dying moments, and that he gave him the last rites and talked to him. It's such a consolation. He's a caring, loving man. Throughout the worst of the Troubles he has done everything he could and talked to people across the divide and helped them towards the peace process. As far as I'm concerned he has the makings of a saint."

Fr Daly is greatly encouraged by the steps towards peace. He has a "sneaky respect" for Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein, who lives in Londonderry, despite their opposing views on the use of arms for political gain. Fr Daly considers him "an exemplary father, an exemplary husband and a good churchgoer. I think he also has a sneaky respect for me, although we have been deadly opponents for many years. I respect his ability generally as an organiser, and his ability politically".

There have been many changes to the streets on which Bloody Sunday unfolded. The high-rise flats beside which Jackie Duddy was shot are no longer there, and the area is dotted with smart modern red-brick homes. The overcrowding and high unemployment are long gone, as are the soldiers, the incessant rioting and the regular deaths. The role Fr Daly played, however, is still much in evidence. His stooped figure, handkerchief in hand, has been immortalised in a mural on the side of a house, painted by the Bogside Artists five years ago. Clearly no one in the town will forget what the priest did that day.

Does Fr Daly think he can ever put Bloody Sunday behind him? Not before Lord Saville puts things to rest, he says. "After that I won't talk about it any more."