Fr Gerry Campbell to embark on cross-border run to highlight trafficking

Fr Gerry Campbell

Local priest Fr Gerry Campbell will undertake a diocesan run this weekend to help raise awareness of modern day trafficking.

The parish priest of Kilkerley, Fr Campbell will start from the Bann and run to the Boyne from Sunday until Wednesday in support of Act to Prevent Trafficking (APT).

A native of Magherafelt in Derry, the former St Patrick’s parish administrator, is no stranger to running the length of the Archdiocese of Armagh.

His first diocesan walk/run was in 2013 when a team of runners and walkers joined him at various parts of the archdiocese to raise funds for Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.  Last year he ran the same route in support of the Trócaire’s 2014 Lenten Campaign, which highlighted the global water crisis.

Fr Gerry will commence his cross-border run in Newbridge, Co Derry on Sunday and will arrive in Kilsaran on Tuesday. On Wednesday he will run from St Mary’s Church in Kilsaran to St Peter’s Church in Drogheda.

He will be joined by supporters along the running route and locals are encouraged to show him their support when he comes through Dundalk on Tuesday.

In welcoming Father Campbell’s initiative Archbishop Eamon Martin said: “In recent days the large scale loss of life in the Mediterranean Sea has once again highlighted human trafficking as a real and present problem which needs be addressed locally, nationally and internationally.  As a start we need a personal awareness of what trafficking is, and how it can be prevented.

“I warmly welcome Father Gerry’s initiative which seeks to raise public awareness about this form of human exploitation and aggressive family displacement.  I ask the faithful to remember in their prayers all people who have experienced trafficking, and I invite anyone who can to come out and support Father Gerry on his route.”

Those who wish to support the local priest can contact him via email at gerrycampbell65@gmail.com

Boland disappointed with manner of Cardinal Brady’s retirement

Brendan Boland’s book ‘Sworn to Silence’

Local abuse victim Brendan Boland (53) has expressed disappointment at the manner of Cardinal Sean Brady’s retirement as Archbishop of Armagh and Catholic Primate of All-Ireland, describing it it as “too little, too late.”

The cardinal, who was 75 on Saturday, has submitted his resignation to Rome, as is required of all Catholic bishops when they reach that age. He remains a cardinal for life and may continue to vote in papal elections until August 16th, 2019, when he will be 80.

In 1975 Boland, then 14, was questioned by canon lawyer Fr Sean Brady and Dundalk parish priest Msgr Francis Donnelly on allegations he made about being abused by Norbertine priest Fr Brendan Smyth.

Present in support of Boland was then young Dominican priest Fr Oliver McShane in whom the teenager had first confided about the abuse. Fr McShane has since left the priesthood. At the end of the inquiry Brendan Boland was sworn to secrecy by Fr Brady.

On Cardinal Brady’s letter of resignation, Brendan – who recently released a book on the subject called ‘Sworn to Silence’ – said  “it’s a long time coming.” He felt “he should have done it back in 2010. Maybe he should not have taken the job at all in 1994 when he found out Smyth was arrested in Northern Ireland”.

Interviewed on RTÉ Radio One’s This Week programme yesterday, he said he and Smyth’s other victims were “really disappointed. Cardinal Brady is resigning, but it appears to us that he’s just retiring naturally as if he’s done nothing wrong. I feel let down again. They’re attempting to save face again.

“They’ve failed to acknowledge the mishandling of the information that I gave them back in 1975, which is the names and addresses of five or six other children that I knew were being abused, and they failed to act on that.

“Back then the cardinal could at least have gone to the parents of the children, that would have stopped it. He had the information,” Mr Boland said.

“He went to another child and he took him out of school and he questioned him without even letting his parents know and he swore that other child to secrecy as well, in Cavan. So that meant that child wasn’t going to tell his parents and to this day that child has never done it.”

Cardinal Brady had apologised to him but “I wasn’t looking for a personal apology to myself. I was looking for an apology to all the children who had been abused since 1975, when he had the information. That’s the apology I wanted, not an apology to me.”

He has “no desire to meet with Cardinal Brady whatsoever”, but he would like the Cardinal to “read my book (Sworn to Silence), read it on a human level, and reflect on it, then come and talk to me and then tell me if he felt he was right to retire naturally or if he should have resigned.”