By Frank McNamara


THE parish priest who has led his flock through the turmoil of the Holy Cross school dispute has said it is the most frightening conflict of the many he has experienced.

Father Aidan Troy has spent years working in trouble spots around the world.

But the 55-year-old priest, a member of the Passionist Order, said his role in the Ardoyne conflict had been a real “baptism of fire”.

He has only worked in the north Belfast parish for five weeks.

“I’m very fortunate in a way, having travelled so much, but my work brought me first hand experience of what apartheid did in South Africa,” he told the Irish News, pointing to similarities between the racial segregation and the religious segregation of parts of Belfast.

“Apartheid had a terrible effect in places like Soweto and elsewhere and there were all the other signs such as ‘whites’ and ‘non-whites’ benches in the parks.”

Originally from Bray in Co Dublin, Fr Troy left the town just south of Dublin city when he was 18-years-old.

Fr Troy went to University College Dublin and, after graduating, attended Clonliffe College, Dublin for fours years’ seminary and theology training.

In addition to his work in South Africa, Fr Troy said he has experienced the religious strife between Christians and Moslems in Indonesia.

He has also spent time in Rwanda, where tribal warfare has caused the massacre of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

He said the conflict he saw involving the Congolese people in Central Africa is a civil war “going on so long, it is not reported any more”.

But this priest has witnessed not only violent conflict; the two years that he spent in San Francisco in the mid-1980s brought him into contact with discord of a different kind, where people were victimised because the Aids epidemic was misunderstood.

However he also told the Irish News that his work in Ireland had given him exposure to the early days of the north’s troubles.

Speaking of a time almost 30 years ago, while he was stationed in Crossgar, Co Down, he said: “That was the aftermath of internment and it is fascinating in a way to come back 30 years later and find so much has changed, but in other ways, things have stayed the same.”

Belfast’s sectarian troubles are now part of his knowledge of worldwide conflict and he has ranked the bomb incident which terrified children in Ardoyne this week alongside the worst.

“When the pipe bomb was thrown it was the most terrifying thing. It seemed so much closer. It’s certainly the most traumatic thing I have been through – to walk up that road and experience the real, raw nakedness of the hatred come out.”

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