Irish churches unite in response to terrorist bombing
8/20/1998 News media contact: Tim Tanton · (615) 742-5470 · Nashville, Tenn. By John Singleton* Irish church leaders have called people throughout Ireland to express their sympathy and solidarity with the citizens of Omagh on Saturday, Aug. 22, one week after the town was torn by a terrorist bomb.
Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Ireland, Presbyterian Church and the Methodist Church will join with the community in Omagh for an "act of prayerful reflection" at 2:45 p.m. local time. The period will culminate in a moment of silence at 3:10 p.m., the time when a terrorist bomb was detonated on Aug. 15.
The car-bomb blast killed 28 people and injured more than 330. The terrorist attack, the worst in Northern Ireland, was carried out by a dissident group of the Irish Republican Army called the Real IRA.
The Rev. David J. Kerr, president of the Methodist Church in Ireland, appealed to all politicians and people of influence to do everything in their power to carry out the democratic wishes of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland as expressed by the Good Friday peace agreement.
"In the name of our common humanity, I call on those people who have carried out this barbaric act to cease their mindless campaign of violence," the president said.
"I am shocked, outraged and saddened by the mindless and savage violence which has been visited on the peaceful town of Omagh," he told the Methodist Recorder, a London-based newspaper. "I am appalled at the extent of the murder and injury to ordinary innocent people."
Two Methodist families were among the bereaved, and on Aug. 18, two Methodists were known to be hospitalized in critical condition with severe injuries. Kerr participated in some of the funerals that followed in Omagh, together with the superintendent minister of the Omagh and Fintona circuit, the Rev. Peter Good, who was returning from an exchange pastorate in Michigan.
"I don't ever remember having an experience like this, and I want to ask our Methodist
folk everywhere to pray for the people of Omagh this week as we share the funerals," Kerr said. "Above all, we have to keep working for the peace agreement even in the face of this violence."
Kerr and his wife, Eileen, broke off their vacation after the bombing to go to Omagh, where they joined other clergy and church workers of all denominations in counseling and being alongside the families of people who were dead, injured or unaccounted for. The Kerrs went first to the hospital in Omagh and then to the crowded leisure center, where people were keeping a grim vigil waiting for news of relatives and friends who were missing.
"It was simply a room full of people sitting quietly waiting, hoping against hope for good news," the president said. On the walls were lists of casualties, which were periodically updated as news was received from hospitals in Londonderry, Belfast, Dungannon and Enniskillen.
The Kerrs also met the local member of Parliament for West Tyrone, William Thompson, a local preacher in the Omagh and Fintona circuit. "He was deeply shocked and told us he never thought that anything like this would ever happen to 'my little town'," Kerr said.
"It was in many ways an emotional see-saw with people's hopes raised and then, if their relative or friend wasn't named, dashed again," Kerr said. "And yet my overall impression was of the calm and dignity of people who were containing their grief and who were supporting one another as they waited for news."
As a social worker in a hospice and a member of one of the Belfast "trauma teams," Eileen Kerr immediately became involved in comforting and counseling.
A member of the Omagh Methodist congregation, Mervyn Ewing, who has been accepted as a candidate for the ordained ministry, introduced the president to Methodist families who were awaiting news of loved ones.
Among them was Percy Hawkes, a County Tyrone farmer, who was waiting for word of his wife Olive, age 60, who had gone shopping in the afternoon and had not been heard of since. It was not until 11 a.m. the following day that confirmation came that she had been killed.
"The only way she could be identified was by a description of the clothing she was wearing," Kerr said. "Apparently she was very close to the bomb."
A nephew of the Hawkeses, Kenneth, lost his fiancee, Esther Gibson, a Sunday school teacher in the Rev. Ian Paisley's Free Presbyterian Church.
The Methodist fatalities included a 21-year-old student, Julie Hughes, whose father is a bank manager in Omagh. "She was home doing a summer job and working in a photographer's shop," Kerr said. "Her twin brother Kim had just arrived home, and he was absolutely devastated. His mother and father, as well as coping with their own grief, were trying to console him because he and his sister had been very close."
Kerr said that those in critical condition in the hospital -- many with "horrendous injuries" - included members of the circuit. One member, Doreen Preston, has had a leg amputated at the knee and is suffering from multiple fractures. Another, Edie Henderson, was in intensive care in the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, with a fractured skull and other injuries.
"Our Methodist community in the area is not a large one, but it has certainly been very heavily hit," Kerr said.
At around midnight in the leisure center, Kerr was asked by the director of social services for the area, David Bolton, a Methodist from Darling Street church, Enniskillen, to lead all the relatives in prayer with the Roman Catholic bishop of Derry.
"It was a very moving moment as together we led that whole community of grieving people in prayer," said Kerr, who paid tribute to Bolton and all the social workers who sat throughout the night with families that were waiting for news.
On Sunday morning, accompanied by Ewing, Kerr shared worship in two churches linked with people killed or injured in the blast. These were at the country chapel of Maine and at the Omagh town center church.
"They were very moving services where people just grieved and we prayed with them," Kerr said. "I preached from Psalm 27 and tried to share some words of comfort as I focused on the theme of God as our refuge and our strength."
Each service started with a reading of a list of those known to have been bereaved or injured. Meanwhile, the Rev. Tommy Stevenson, a first-year probationer minister appointed to the Omagh and Fintona circuit, was busy elsewhere. He spent most of Sunday supporting people as they went to the morgue to identify their dead relatives. That afternoon, Kerr made a pastoral visit to every home that had a Methodist fatality or injury.
# # #
*Singleton is news editor of the weekly Methodist Recorder in London. He can be contacted at: editorial@methodistrecorder.co.uk
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