The murder of Archbishop Michael Courtney in Burundi is a sharp and tragic reminder that Ireland's Catholic internationalism has been expressed as effectively in the diplomatic and ethical spheres as in the strictly religious ones.
The tributes paid to him at his funeral in Nenagh on Saturday fully emphasised each of these aspects of his career as a Vatican representative in Zimbabwe, Senegal, India, Cuba, Egypt and at the Council of Europe before his appointment as papal nuncio to Burundi three years ago.
There he played a critical role in brokering a peace process which promises to end the civil war in which 300,000 people have died over the last 10 years. The conflict has received less publicity than that in neighbouring Rwanda, where a genocide involving many of the same social and political forces saw two or three times as many people die in the summer of 1996.
But the Burundi civil war, driven by ethnic rivalry between the Tutsi minority and Hutu majority inherited from colonial power play and stereotyping, together with a greed for power and wealth among competing elites after independence, has been just as destructive - and probably a bigger catalyst of conflict in the Great Lakes region of central Africa.
The Vatican's involvement in resolving these conflicts arises from the historical association of the Catholic Church with Belgian and French colonialism and then from its determination to transcend their divisive influence on independent Africa's fast growing communities of believers.
Ireland's experience gave Archbishop Courtney a special insight into what many have regarded as an intractable conflict not worth the rest of the world's political attention.
The skill and commitment he brought to bear upon it over the last three years should inspire others to complete his good work. Its message was well summarised by his Vatican colleague, the Coadjutor Archbishop of Dublin, Most Rev Diarmuid Martin, last week. He said that if the families of Burundi and neighbouring countries could get their voices into newspaper headlines they would say: "Stop the violence; block the arms which are keeping it alive; expose any connivance of outsiders which brings death to us and our children."
Ireland can play an influential role over the next six months as president of the European Union to bring the Burundi conflict and other African issues up the international political agenda in solidarity with Archbishop Courtney's beliefs and achievements.