From the sound of bagpipes echoing in St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast, to the first ever concert of Irish and Scottish music in Protestant east Belfast and primary school-age banjo players holding their own in an afternoon pub performance, the city is buzzing with the sound of traditional music everywhere you turn.'

More than 500 people of all ages are taking the summer school classes to learn traditional music, song and dance, and there are thousands more attending talks, sessions and concerts.

Fiddle player and summer school tutor Martin Dowling, who has written about traditional music and the peace process, tells me that music did not escape the schism that the Troubles caused in the city in the 1970s.

"The Troubles pushed traditional music in Belfast into more hidden, segregated spaces and, although there had always been Protestants who played traditional music, a generation of urban Protestants rejected it as something that was exclusively Catholic."

Meanwhile, in the rest of Ireland there was an explosion in the popularity of traditional music with groups such as the Chieftains, Planxty and the Bothy Band, and the emergence of festivals and the annual summer schools which have become a key part of encouraging and nurturing traditional instrument playing, singing and dance culture.

Traditional players in the north talk about having to always travel long distances to go to summer schools and Ray Morgan, chair of the event's board, tells me he would take young people to schools over the border every year.

After the Good Friday agreement there was a significant increase in Catholics learning to play the music but organisations in the city that had been trying to create non-sectarian spaces for traditional music were up against the cultural schism left over from the Troubles.

It was Morgan who had the idea for a similar school in Belfast, and who, with Dónal O'Connor - a fiddle player, film-maker, and now the event's artistic director - made it a reality in 2015.

"Traditional music was undervalued and hidden here compared to the south and I thought this would help change that," Morgan says.

O'Connor describes how widening access to every community in the city is at the core of what the organisers set out to achieve.

"From day one we wanted, given the fractured society we have here after the Troubles, to find a way to make everybody feel that this music was theirs. We are trying to normalise all these things that were perceived to be for the other." Read more

• Dave McNally writes for The Guardian newspaper

The Catholic and Church of Ireland Primates of All Ireland, Eamon Martin and John McDowell, accused London of setting up its Northern Secretary as a "commissar" to adjudicate over countless murders and crimes.

The Archbishops also say they are baffled by the "liberal scattering like fairy dust" of the word "reconciliation" in the legislation, which is due to make its way through the House of Lords in Westminster this week. Read more

The Agreement committed Northern Ireland's political parties to resolving political issues by democratic and peaceful methods.

Speaking on the Agreement's 20th anniversary, the Catholic Church Primates of All Ireland say it "took a great effort to achieve".

It "will equally take risk and leadership at all levels to maintain," they say.

The Agreement included establishing a power-sharing government involving parties representing the majority Protestant population and minority Catholic population and removing border security between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

It also led to decommissioning the Irish Republican Army and Protestant paramilitary organisations' weapons.

The Agreement explicitly rejects using or threatening violence and emphasises the principles of "partnership, equality and mutual respect" as the "basis of relationships".

Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, Eamon Martin, and his Church of Ireland counterpart, Archbishop Richard Clarke, say the Agreement has continuing potential to transform society and life for all.

"Nothing remotely its equal has been outlined then or since," they said.

They both pray the Agreement's anniversary will help "rekindle a spirit of opportunity, healing and hope for lasting peace" which they say is needed more than ever.

They are calling on all people of good will to be ambassadors of reconciliation, helping to rebuild trust and mutual respect.

Martin and Clarke are concerned about a political impasse in Northern Ireland that has continued since January 2017.

It concerns the collapse of the power-sharing government in Stormont, which collapsed over a row between the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin.

They are challenging the institutions to ask themselves "is it because the principles and structure of the Good Friday Agreement have failed us, or rather, is it that we have together failed to make the most of those supportive principles which it offered?"

They paid tribute to the efforts of the international community who not only invested significantly in the process which led to the Agreement, but who "have remained alongside us as our partners for peace."

Source

• The Tablet
• Crux Now
• Image: Catholic Ireland

The Catholic Diocese of Derry says Daly died peacefully on Monday after a long illness.

Daly was a priest in Londonderry when British paratroopers opened fire on a Catholic civil-rights protest march on January 30, 1972, killing 13 people.

The killings helped fuel Northern Ireland's sectarian violence, in which some 3,000 people died.

Daly became a hero by administering last rites to victims on the streets amid the mayhem of the Catholic Bogside district. A photo of the priest waving a blood-stained white handkerchief as he tried to help a dying 17-year-old become one of the event's iconic images.

"There's scarcely a day that passes when I don't think about that day. It's haunted me all these years," Daly said 25 years later.

An initial British inquiry outraged Northern Ireland Catholics with its finding that the British troops' gunfire followed IRA firing and that the victims could have been armed.

A 12-year investigation found in 2010 that the soldiers were not under attack and fired without justification on unarmed civilians, many of whom were fleeing or aiding the wounded.

"Bishop Daly served, without any concern for himself, throughout the traumatic years of the Troubles, finding his ministry shaped by the experience of witnessing violence and its effects; through this dreadful period he always strove to preach the Gospel of the peace of Christ," the current bishop of Derry, Donal McKeown said.

Source:

• Crux
• Zenit
• Image: Belfast Telegraph
  

Rev. Paisley died in Belfast on September 12, aged 88. He had a history of heart ailments.

He served as First Minister of Northern Ireland for a year when power was first devolved from London in 2007.

His deputy, Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin, expressed sadness at the news of his death.

"Over a number of decades we were political opponents and held very different views on many, many issues, but the one thing we were absolutely united on was the principle that our people were better able to govern themselves than any British government," he said.

For many years, Rev. Paisley's incendiary rhetoric stoked anti-Catholic violence.

Michael Kelly, editor of the Irish Catholic newspaper, tweeted that Rev. Paisley "fanned the flames of hatred and murder".

But Mr Kelly expressed sorrow for the Paisley family.

Rev. Paisley rose to prominence in the 1960s at the start of "the Troubles", in which Northern Ireland was engulfed in sectarian violence between Catholics and Protestants.

He led Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, but it was said that he was as helpful to Catholic constituents as to Protestants.

He served in Britain's House of Commons for three decades and was elected to the European Parliament in 1979.

It was in the European Parliament in 1988, during an address by St John Paul II, that he held up a sign saying "Anti-Christ" and started shouting "I renounce you" before being forcibly removed.

He is also infamous for saying of Catholics in 1969: "They breed like rabbits and multiply like vermin."

He said he considered all Catholics to be members of the Irish Republican Army, which he branded as a collective of terrorists.

In 2010, Rev. Paisley led protests against the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Britain.

But his rhetoric wasn't always directed against Catholics. In 1985, he labelled Margaret Thatcher a "wicked, treacherous and lying woman".

For decades, Rev. Paisley had rejected any form of political compromise with Northern Ireland's Catholic minority.

But, during the Troubles, Rev. Paisley began visiting Dublin to probe various political possibilities for the future.

He became Northern Ireland's co-leader in 2007 after entering an agreement with Sinn Féin, the political arm of the IRA.

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• The Guardian
• Washington Post
• Image: BBC