Protestant extremists upset the St Patrick’s Day celebrations in Armagh – as the leader of Ireland’s Catholic Church marched with the Vatican’s new ambassador, the New York-born Archbishop Charles Brown.
Cardinal Sean Brady had invited Archbishop Brown to the city’s St Patrick’s Cathedral for the first time as Papal Nuncio to Ireland.
But Armagh’s traditional St Patrick’s Day parade had to be diverted and cut short after a bomb scare in Ireland’s ecclesiastical capital.
Protestant extremists made a call claiming to have left a bomb in the town center.
USA Today reports that British Army experts used a remote-controlled robot to dismantle a suspicious package but deemed it a hoax.
The report says the threat overshadowed a special celebration of Ireland’s patron saint at St. Patrick’s Cathedral where Cardinal Brady formally welcomed Brown.
The two men had marched at the head of the threat-disrupted parade.
Cardinal Brady told his guest: “You come to our country at a critical time.
“Our island, north and south, continues to recover from dramatic economic setbacks after the years of the Celtic Tiger.
“At the same time we search for another, more important recovery … the recovery of our Christian memory.”
The Cardinal also expressed his concern that St. Patrick’s Day celebrations at home and abroad were too focused on partying in green clothes.
He added: “This seems to the base rather than celebrating St Patrick’s Christian commitment as a man on fire with the truth and hope of the Gospel.”
Cardinal Brady also offered prayers for the estimated 50,000 citizens who have emigrated in the past year.
7 Comments
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.clevelander | Mar 19, 2013, 02:38 PM EDT
Its funny. If you are a Catholic and you did this you are a terrorist. If you are Protestant you are extremists. It's a funny world.
IrelandNorth | Mar 19, 2013, 04:34 AM EDT
Too true, Seanmor! I've been proposing for discussion the Aristotelian golden mean for years now. The Buddhist middle way. A united Ireland needn't be a forcible takover by either artificial segment of the Island of Ireland, or a subsumption by the Island of Great Britain but a dialectical synthesis of both. With the ever lumbering tower of Babel that is the EU, the Commonwealth of Nations seems an amicable compromise from where I'm observing the panoply of reactionaryism to one financial crisis after another. Both Roman Catholicism and Anglican Protestantism have failed Ireland miserably. Time we tried a little generic Christianity for a change.
Seanmor | Mar 18, 2013, 07:06 PM EDT
The Reunification of Ireland is by no means impossible, but it will require a great effort by the leaders in both parts of the divided county. Most people in in all of Ireland seem to think that Reunification means the imcorporation of the North into the South, and the chances of this happening in the forseeable futute are virtually nil. How about the South reaching across the artificial border and making Reunification as attractive as posdsible to the North, also to to G.B.? Irish people, North and South, have much more in common with the English, Scots and Welsh than with the Rumanians or Bulgarians. A Reunited Ireland with closer political links with G.B. would be very beneficial to both countries.
Smyrnian | Mar 18, 2013, 06:54 PM EDT
The price of ignorance. These Protestant extremists still think its the 1690's. They need a solid education away from N. Ireland Protestant ghettos which breeds this ignorance and hatred. It's a shame.
IrelandNorth | Mar 18, 2013, 04:12 PM EDT
Ulster-Scot Calvinists have nothing to fear from a united Ireland, and everything to gain. The boundary commission was drawn in the shifting sands of political paranoia. The longer Ireland remains partitioned, the longer a more organic relationship with the neighbouring island nation is delayed. They should have the courage of their own convictions, take their seats at the constitutional conference, and help build "a shared island, a shared Ireland" (Ó h'Úigín, 2011). Sooner, rather than later, the parsimonious sons of Ulster will have to reconcile with the prod-igal sons of Munster, Leinster and Connacht. Why defer the inevitable?
Helen Ferone | Mar 18, 2013, 10:22 AM EDT
It's time to end the nonsense and UNITE with the Rep. of Ireland.
cillowen | Mar 18, 2013, 09:39 AM EDT
The NIR-UKers go beserk period but on St Patrick's Day they really show their true nature, BONKERS.