The Coadjutor Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Rev Diarmuid Martin, yesterday said no institution, "either of the Church or of the Community of Nations", can hold its head completely high as we reflect on the atrocious genocide in Rwanda.
The genocide, he said, was the first of the technological era. The knowledge of what was taking place was availableand the possible scenario for international intervention was never far from the drawing board.
But modern men and women of the 20th century were unable to respond with much more than the customary inertia of our institutions, "especially since the direct interests of the great and the powerful were not evidently at stake", he said.At a Mass in the Adam and Eve's Church on Merchant Quay, Dublin, last night to mark the 10th anniversary of the beginnings of the slaughter, he said "the signs were there".
He praised the work of Trócaire, Concern, Refugee Trust, Goal and various religious congregations. He said we should not overlook the leadership given in the post-genocide period by the Irish State. Irish people were conscious that having failed to prevent genocide we could not be missing from the work of reconciliation".
Later, at a service in St Paul's Church on Arran Quay, Dublin, held in memory of Irish missionaries martyred abroad, he said perhaps it was the murder of Archbishop Michael Courtney that recalled most vividly to the people of Ireland that even the Church of the 21st century is destined to have its own martyrs.
Very often the martyrs of this century however were "persons who never would have even considered themselves as natural candidates for martyrdom."