THE GOVERNMENT has been urged by Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu to remember less well-off societies when considering cuts in overseas aid.
He said the economic meltdown had caused turmoil in the home of the Celtic Tiger. But he asked: “Can you imagine what the impact must be on those who have been, in any case, on the margins of international society? . . . We belong together, and protectionism does not work . . . It is self-defeating.”
Archbishop Tutu was replying to questions from RTÉ broadcaster Seán O’Rourke at a meeting of the UCD Literary and Historical Society last night.
When O’Rourke pointed out that there were many students in the audience worried about their job prospects, Archbishop Tutu said Ireland should not forget its history of economic recovery.
“Just remember where you came from and how you made it . . . You came from down there, you surprised the world, you emerged from the morass.”
Asked if he had ever been personally afraid, Archbishop Tutu replied: “Oh yes. We knew that there were assassinations and things like that.”
He recalled getting angry on one occasion when one of his children seized up after taking a phone call in which the person on the other end of the line had threatened the archbishop’s life. “They were aware that they were talking to a child,” he said.
Archbishop Tutu spoke of his admiration for US president Barack Obama. He recalled being invited to Washington to preach at a pre-inauguration service.
Amid laughter from the audience, the archbishop said: “I thought I was going to get a VIP seat, but I wasn’t.” Such were the crowds at the event, he said, that “you couldn’t put your hand in your pocket”.
Mr Obama, he said, had “energised and galvanised so many people”, and Americans walked tall in a way that they had not for a very long time.
Archbishop Tutu said one of those present had told him how he was waving an American flag. “He said: ‘Previously, I burnt those flags’.”
The US president had filled the world with a new sense of hope, Archbishop Tutu added.
