POPE JOHN Paul II urged the Catholic bishops to put pressure on IRA hunger strikers at the Maze Prison, Long Kesh, to abandon their fast because it clashed with Christian principles, previously unseen papers at the British National Archives in London reveal.
The papal message during the first hunger strike at the Maze, in the winter of 1980, said this should be in addition to the pressure the bishops, led by Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich, were putting on the British government.
The text of the pope’s instruction was supplied to the British authorities by the apostolic nuncio to the United Kingdom at the time, Archbishop Bruno Heim, who asked them to keep it confidential.
The hunger strike, led by IRA prisoner Brendan Hughes, began on October 27th and was called off on December 18th without achieving its aim that republican inmates be allowed wear their own clothing, among other concessions.
The newly released papers report that Archbishop Heim told British officials the pope’s message to the bishops “gave a significant steer to them to do what they could to prevent the continuation of the hunger-strike”.
British officials believed the message “had obviously been somewhat unwelcome” to the bishops, “to judge from the lack of any announcement from Archbishop O’Fiaich or any others, or the release of the text”.
But the message was “clear enough: the Irish hierarchy should not address themselves merely to the British authorities (as they have up to now) but also to the prisoners themselves (which they have hitherto failed to do)”.
More importantly, the pope’s statement rejected any religious sanction for the strike. Archbishop Heim stressed this was a significant step for the Vatican.
The pope said: “The Bishops are urged not only to insist with the British Authorities but also to do everything possible in order to persuade prisoners to adopt a more human attitude, and I repeat, one more in keeping with Christian principles.”
Former Sinn Féin director of publicity Danny Morrison, who was in constant contact with the Maze prisoners at the time, said last night: “This comes as no surprise: Bishop Cahal Daly, a well-known anti-republican prelate, was chief adviser to the Vatican on the North, and his fingerprints are all over this perverse advice.”
After a visit to the Maze in August 1978, Dr Ó Fiaich compared the condition of the prisoners on the “dirty protest” with that of “homeless people living in sewer pipes in the slums of Calcutta”