Archbishop Eamon Martin: I was very torn when Martin McGuinness died

Seen from the Walls of Derry, the Bogside looks very small. “There’s the cemetery where Martin McGuinness is buried. Over there is his house. Eamon McCann is on the same street, as was my aunt,” says Eamon Martin.

“John Hume was up there. And Nell [McCafferty] was up here behind the cathedral. It’s very much intimate,” the Catholic Primate of All-Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh declares, pointing to the houses.

Passing along the city walls, and the remnants of a recent storm, Martin is greeted everywhere, sometimes as Fr Martin, or as monsignor, occasionally as archbishop, and by one man who wondered how he was and where he is now at all.

Derry’s bitter social and political history is marked on the landscape: “This would have been crammed with houses because gerrymandering and housing discrimination meant that you squooshed as many Catholics in as you could,” says Martin.

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The deprivation was “awful”, he adds. “It was a terrible situation. The gerrymandering or the squeezing of everybody into the one area was to keep them all in this electoral ward which had only so many seats.”

Martin became a curate in St Eugene’s Cathedral, just a stone’s throw away, in 1987. “So you are right at the heart of what it is to be a Derry person when you’re here. It was a real joy for me to work here also as a young priest.”

Looking earlier from the gates of St Eugene’s, Martin had pointed to William Street where Samuel Devenney (42) died in April 1969 – the first victim of the Troubles – after being severely beaten in his home by the RUC.

You could see out the window, police and army keeping guard, while inside guns and everything and a guard of honour. I said the rosary, last decade in Irish

—  Martin on the funeral of two IRA men in St Eugene's Cathedral

Being a priest at St Eugene’s had its hazards. One night he got a phone call from the RUC asking him to check out a device at St Joseph’s Place. If the police came to investigate it would cause a riot.

“I walked down and pretended not to look and walked around a wee bit, saw a bag there which wasn’t a bomb but may have been a hoax,” he says, describing himself as “a stupid young priest”.

Priests, he said, were caught in the middle. On October 28th that year, while bishop of Derry Edward Daly was attending the Birmingham Six trial in the UK, two IRA men – Eddie McSheffrey (29) and Paddy Deery (31) – were killed by their own car bomb.

Daly had outlawed all republican funerals after shots were fired over a coffin in the grounds of Long Tower Church that spring, but the IRA insisted the funerals of the two men would take place in St Eugene’s.

Just two months in St Eugene’s Cathedral by then, Martin remembers how talks between Daly and McGuinness “went down to the wire”, with the bishop agreeing that the coffins would allowed into the church, under protest.

Martin was sent to say the prayers at McSheffrey’s home, where his Tricolour-draped coffin with two men in paramilitary uniform standing in a guard of honour: “You could see out the window, police and army keeping guard, while inside guns and everything and a guard of honour. I said the rosary, last decade in Irish.”

Later, a new stand-off occurred when the police and military insisted on flanking the coffins on the way to the graveyard, with the IRA saying no: “They took the two coffins back up to the doors of the cathedral, sat them down there.”

Hours later, an agreement was reached where the police would go in front, following two priests, including Fr Martin, followed by the coffins and pallbearers and family and, then, the rest of the mourners.

Soon, however, the pallbearers were changed, and then again every 100 yards putting more and distance between them and the police: “The further up the road we went, the further the police were getting behind,” he says.

He was seen by all us teenagers as in charge ... I believe that later in his life he became a strong practitioner of his faith

—  Eamon Martin on Martin McGuinness

Halfway up the road, scores of umbrellas were unfurled and a volley of shots were fired over the coffins, while mourners scattered in all directions under the IRA’s instruction and the RUC batoned people. Everything descended into chaos.

The coffins fell on the ground, before there was “a very quick burial”, says Martin. Afterwards, Daly and McGuinness reached a compromise, where no shots would be fired inside church grounds during IRA funerals.

Martin was always aware of McGuinness growing up, who was “seen by all us teenagers as in charge”. By 1987-1988, he was in politics, regularly at a Mass in Irish at Nazareth House said by the man who would later become archbishop.

“I believe that later in his life he became a strong practitioner of his faith,” says the archbishop, who remembers the brutal killing of alleged IRA informer Frankie Hegarty, whose family always blamed McGuinness for his death.

“Patsy Gillespie [who was strapped into a van carrying a bomb and forced to drive it into a British army checkpoint while his family were held captive, killing five] was another one,” he says.

[ Archbishop Eamon Martin: ‘Peaceful and reconciled society’ set out in Belfast Agreement still to be accomplished ]

Later, Martin, who was president at St Columb’s College from 2000 to 2008, dealt with McGuinness as Stormont’s minister for education, where he was well liked by a lot of people, very charming and genuinely interested in education.

The archbishop remembers “being very torn” when McGuinness died: “I wanted to say something but I remember being quite torn as to how to say – to pay tribute to his peacemaking – and that’s in the end what I did.

“I would say he played a leading role in bringing the IRA away from the bomb and the bullet, which has to be laudable. I found it very, very difficult to praise anything done during his years in active service, if you want to use that term.”

Martin was raised in the Pennyburn area of Derry. He had seen young people his age getting involved in riots, but he did not, partly because he lived in a quieter area and partly because he was deterred by his “very strict” parents.

“They were very nationalist, of course. We would have been very much John Hume. We would not have been in favour of republican violence. That would have been true of all of my family,” he says.

Eamon Martin was born in 1961, the eighth of 12 children. His only memories of the late 1960s “were of my brothers and sisters talking about the Troubles”, while Pennyburn slowly, then quickly, became Catholic.

Often he took a shortcut through the Bogside to get to St Columb’s, though he was not supposed to: “Shooting was common, shooting during the school day and shooting in and around the school.

“I can remember us getting down under the desks on occasions because foot patrols would be going through the school. Things like that now seem really mad, when you look back.”

Some deaths stand out, including nine-year-old Bernadette McCool in June 1970, who died along with her father, Thomas, sister Carole (4) and two other IRA men when a bomb being prepared in the family home exploded.: “I remember our teacher saying prayers for her,” he says.

Near Free Derry Corner, the archbishop points to the mural of Annette McGavigan, who was killed aged just 14: “She was a couple of years older than me, and she was shot dead by the army here, picking up a rubber bullet.”

And he remembers being on the schoolbus in June 1974 when it came upon “awful scenes”: a bomb being planted at a supermarket by two IRA members – 17-year-old Gerard Craig and 18-year-old David Russell – exploded prematurely: “They were putting the coats over the remains,” says Martin.

It was almost as if there was a justification, and you knew people in school who were joining

—  Martin on growing sympathies to the armed struggle after Bloody Sunday

The memories keep coming, including “an awful incident” when Manus Deery was shot dead in May 1972 by a British army sniper who claimed the teenager had been carrying a nail bomb.

“He was eating a bag of chips,” he said, noting that it was not until February 2019 that the British ministry of defence accepted that he was not armed and that his shooting breached military rules.

“Awful things like that fuelled the recruitment, fuelled the campaign, or the armed struggle,” says Martin, adding that he – like “other young fellas of age – were sort of sympathetic to the struggle, particularly after Bloody Sunday”.

“It was almost as if there was a justification, and you knew people in school who were joining”, though teachers “kept everything away from us” inside the classroom, leaving the discussions to happen on the playground and outside school.

Growing into his teenage years, however, he became “very much aware” of Bishop Daly and the Catholic Church’s position on the IRA: “Our parents would have brought us up very much close to the church, very active in our parish.”

For Martin, his knowledge of Northern Ireland’s Protestant community was developed by a love of music and choirs. “You literally harmonised together, you played music with people from all sides. It was fantastic.”

It was how he ended up playing trombone in a brass ensemble on the day of Bill Clinton visited Derry the first time in 1995.

Today, he looks back at the Belfast Agreement after 25 years and feels “a great disappointment” that not everyone has been able to acknowledge it as “a significant moment”.

More must be done on reconciliation, he believes, but the 25 years have been wasted in the efforts to bring truth and justice to many: “A lot of the protagonists have moved on, died, and victims have died.”

Telling a sectarian joke or making a sectarian comment is not frowned upon in the same way as, for example, anti-gay or anti-trans [comments]

Church leaders could bring people together, he says, but a lot of the discussions that are happening are taking place among people of his age, rather than among younger people where it should be happening.

Referring to the row caused by members of the Irish women’s football team chanting “Ooh, ah, up the ‘Ra”, he says “a lot” of political sectarianism is due to young people not understanding their actions.

Young people today are, mostly, extremely careful about making homophobic, racist or anti-trans statements, or making derogatory remarks about disabled people, the archbishop says.

“[But] the problem is they’re going home and the sectarianism is still alive and well, so telling a sectarian joke or making a sectarian comment is not frowned upon in the same way as, for example, anti-gay or anti-trans.”

“I’m not advocating a cancel culture but can you imagine if sectarian comments were cancelled in the same way as some others are. That’s not going to happen because, yet, the will’s not there. Everybody is still tribal.”