THE Northern Ireland Secretary, Sir Patrick Mayhew, yesterday visited the ruins of St MacNissi's church in Randalstown, Co Antrim, and condemned the arson attack on it last weekend as an "evil and obscene act".
The parish priest, Father William McKeever, told Sir Patrick the attack was best described in the words of a three-year-old child who had told him that "bad men burned God's house". Sir Patrick replied: "I can't put it more succinctly than that. Arson is always a crime, but the burning of churches seems to me to be more than a crime.
"It seems to be an obscenity," he said, "because it's an attack on the spiritual life of people which cannot be measured in terms of compensation or the cost of rebuilding." Everyone, he added, must guard against feeding sectarian hatred. "I believe that here in Northern Ireland with our special problems there is a great duty of care in that regard."
Those responsible for such attacks were a small minority, he said. But they were sufficiently depraved to hurt and shame the whole of Northern Ireland.
In other attacks in the past week, a Catholic church at Mullavilly, Co Armagh, a Baptist church in east Belfast, and two Church of Ireland halls, one in Co Derry and one in Tyrone, have been damaged by fire.