CARDINAL Daly stepped down as the leader of Irish Catholicism with a restatement of his belief that an agreed settlement, leading to "permanent peace by consent in Northern Ireland", could be achieved in his lifetime.
At a short ceremony at the primate's house in Armagh yesterday, he returned to the theme which has dominated his 30 years as the most outspoken figure in the Irish hierarchy IRAN violence.
He said one of his "great regrets is that the peace process is so perversely slow and fraught with so many setbacks. I believe, nevertheless, that political arguments are compellingly in favour of the IRA's restarting their ceasefire in order to allow Sinn Fein to enter the talks process. No single thing would do more at this time to restore hope and to lessen hate and division in our society than a reinstatement of the IRA ceasefire".
He said that despite recent discoveries of IRA arms and explosives in the Republic and England, he continued to believe in "the sincerity of Sinn Fein's option for the political way forward instead of the violent way forward". However, he also called on the republican movement to "desist from sending out contradictory and self cancelling signals".
He spoke about the "abomination" of last week's attack on a Church of Ireland church in Derry and said pickets of Catholic churches to intimidate people going to church were "despicable". He called for those with influence in the northern communities to use it to get all boycotts stopped immediately.
He said it was "tragic that, when we seemed to be at last beginning to move towards a more open and tolerant society, we should now instead be dragged back into division, suspicion and conflict".
Yesterday's ceremony was hosted by Dr Sean Brady, who took over immediately from Cardinal Daly as Catholic Primate and Archbishop of Armagh. He called the Cardinal "a man of serene and joyful hope" who has "never tired of being a builder of bridges. When the history of ecumenism in Ireland comes to be written, the name of Cahal Daly will certainly be given an honoured and important place".
Dr Brady, a former rector of the Irish College in Rome, will be formally installed as Archbishop of Armagh and Primate in Armagh Cathedral on November 3rd.
Asked by The Irish Times what he felt was his main achievement as a bishop and archbishop, Cardinal Daly said the single thing which gave him most satisfaction was the restoration of St Mel's Cathedral in Longford during his time as Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise. He paid particular tribute to the work done there by the artist, the late Ray Carroll.
When asked about his greatest regret, he expressed sadness that priests had sometimes felt neglected by him, saying that a bishop's life was one beset by many and conflicting demands. There was tension between the responsibilities of administration and pastoral planning and the need to visit, talk to and affirm people in their problems.
He also said that two great disappointments were the "maddeningly slow" pace of the peace process and the turmoil in the church over the clerical child sex abuse scandals.
However, he did not believe that "anybody, either republican or loyalist, could be so insane as to plunge this country back into violence again".
On the child abuse scandals, he hoped that "the new spirit of openness" which the bishops had tried to show on this issue, the implementation of their new guidelines, and "the giving of priority to children" would "bring about a church that is more humble and able openly to acknowledge the faults and weakness and sinfulness of its members, its need for continuing renewal and self searching and change".
Cardinal Daly, who was 79 yesterday, will spend his retirement in a house, formerly his sister's, in south Belfast. He will continue to serve on Vatican congregations for ecumenism, evangelisation and the clergy.
And he will continue to write he has recently published a study, Philosophy in Britain from Bradley to Wittgenstein, and is working on a book about science and religious faith.