TO COMMEMORATE the Flight of the Earls is to celebrate the intimate and irreversible links between Ireland and the rest of Europe, Cardinal Seán Brady said yesterday.
Cardinal Brady gave a homily yesterday in the Church of San Pietro in Montorio, Rome, burial site of both Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and Rory O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell.
Speaking to a congregation which included O'Neill family descendants from France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland, and at the end of a Mass enlivened by the bagpipe playing of Ferdie O'Doherty from Gweedore, Co Donegal, Cardinal Brady recalled how the earls had neither intended nor wanted to come to the Eternal City, but had nonetheless been welcomed with "respect and honour".
Contrasting Ireland's relationship with Britain in 1608 to that of today, Cardinal Brady pointed out that it was thanks to the work of "many good shepherds" at local and national level that the relationship had never been more "characterised by respect and solidarity than it is today".
The relationship would always be a "special one, of mutual possibility and promise".
Cardinal Brady suggested that the EU had played an important part in improving Anglo/Irish relations. "I think it needs to be clearly noted that the development of the broader European project was critical to the healing of this relationship. Indeed, the transformation of the relationship between Ireland and Britain generally, and the Northern Ireland peace process in particular, is one of the most recent and tangible manifestations of the founding aims of the European Union."
Cardinal Brady's homily came on a weekend marked by musical, literary and academic events commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Flight of the Earls.