A former priest invoked the secrecy of the confessional yesterday when he refused to name people he knew to have been members of the Provisional IRA in 1972.
Mr Denis Bradley, who was a Catholic curate in Long Tower parish in Derry at the time of Bloody Sunday, had been pressed by Mr Christopher Clarke QC, counsel to the tribunal, to identify people who were known to him as, or were widely reputed to be, members of the Provisionals at the time.
Mr Clarke remarked that, apart from Mr Martin McGuinness, "the wall of silence vis-a-vis the Provisionals is extremely strong."
Mr Bradley, now a television producer, said if there was any kind of wall of silence it should not be there. He felt strongly - and it had been the consistent position of the priests in Derry - that all parties, including the various branches of the IRA, should come forward and tell what they knew.
However, his difficulty was that he took very seriously wearing a Roman collar, and around that time, when he talked and negotiated with people - not just the IRA but sometimes members of the British army - "the assumption in those people's heads was that they were talking to a priest".
Many people had spoken to him at that time about many things. "Most of it would have been confidential and I would have considered it confessional," he said.
Mr Clarke put it to him that his knowledge of those who were members of the IRA was not solely derived from what he had been told in the confessional.
The witness said this was questionable - "all confessional issues do not take place within a confessional box."
Mr Clarke said that he would move on from this topic, "with the warning that we may have to come back to this at a later date" if the wall of silence remained impenetrable.
The chairman, Lord Saville, asked the witness if he would go to those people "who you feel uncomfortable in naming" and urge them to come forward voluntarily to the tribunal "so that we can, as I think you want us to, try and find out the whole truth about Bloody Sunday".
Mr Bradley said he had already done so a number of times, but was willing to do so again.
Earlier in his statement to the inquiry, Mr Bradley had recounted hearing a remark, before the soldiers entered the Bogside, to the effect that an Official IRA member had fired a shot from a flat and that "the boys" (the Provisional IRA) had got the gunman away.
He said: "You used to hear more confessions in the street than in the confessional box. I had held a fear about the Official IRA's activities that day.
"I had gone on the march aware that the Provisionals were not going to be there. I knew this because I was aware of who they were. I knew how they reacted. I lived among them.
"My parish was densely populated with the Provisionals. Members of the youth club I ran were members of the Provisionals. I would have said to them that they had better not be on the march. They had assured me that they would not be . . . If there were any Provisionals on the march, I feel sure they would not have been armed."
Later, replying to Mr Arthur Harvey QC, for a number of victims' families, the witness agreed with the suggestion that, in being pressurised to name IRA members, "ordinary decent people have been embarrassed to the point that it is almost intolerable".
Mr Bradley said that, to his knowledge, some people had come close to having a nervous breakdown.
The inquiry continues today.