Tributes have been paid locally to “peace priest” Fr Alec Reid who died this morning.
The late Fr Alec Reid.
Fr Reid (82), who died in a Dublin Hospital, played an influential role in the Northern Ireland peace process.
A member of the Redemptorist Order, he facilitated talks between Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams and SDLP leader John Hume and acted as go-between the republican movement and the British Government.
He was one of the witnesses who confirmed the decommissioning of IRA weapons.
In March 1988, pictures of him giving the Last Rites to two British soldiers killed after driving into an IRA funeral cortege, were screened around the world.
In recent years, he was involved in talks with Basque nationalists seeking independence from Spain.
Among those who have paid tribute have been Foyle SDLP MP Mark Durkan and local Sinn Fein MLA Raymond McCartney.
Mr Durkan said he was “deeply saddened” by the passing of Fr Reid, describing him as a “hardy, resilient spiritual man who spent himself well in helping us all get to the better ways and better days that everyone in Ireland deserves.”
Mr Durkan added: “In all my dealings with him I was struck by the way in which he combined a sense of driven urgency with relentless patience.
“He had a real compulsion to respond to the violence in all its forms, forces or causes because it was hurting lives and hardening minds.
“In exercising his pastoral vocation, not compromising it, Fr Reid was grappling with acutely political issues and interests – not just in the nationalist or republican community.
Mr McCartney, who met during the 1979 “blanket protest” by republican prisoners in Long Kesh, offered his sympathy to Fr Reid’s family and his fellow priests.
Mr McCartney added: “He was a man of great compassion and great insight, a very humble man.
“He was always trying to find a resolution and when he took on a cause he became very passionate about it.”
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