Cardinal Daly seriously ill in hospital

ONE of Ireland’s most senior Catholic churchmen, Cardinal Cahal Daly, is seriously ill in hospital after suffering heart problems.

The 92-year-old retired cleric was taken from his home in south Belfast yesterday to the City Hospital’s coronary care unit.

Cardinal Sean Brady, his successor as the Primate of All Ireland, travelled from his home in Armagh yesterday to visit Cardinal Daly, who was born in 1917 and ordained a priest in 1941.

Dr Daly was appointed Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise in 1967 and installed as Archbishop of Armagh in 1990. A year later, he was Cardinal.

He retired in October 1996, and returned to his study of philosophy and is a prolific book writer and has had many philosophical papers published.

He is highly regarded for his work with Irish bishops on the New Ireland Forum in the 1980s and leading a delegation on the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation in the 1990s, both of which explored ways of ending violence in the North.

He was known as a long-time critic of the IRA campaign.

Following the Downing Street declaration in 1993, Dr Daly said any fair-minded person would agree the British government had made significant movement towards recognising the legitimacy of Irish republicanism and accepting the principle of self-determination for the people of Ireland. Rejecting the Downing Street declaration, he said, would mean republicans cutting themselves off definitively from Irish nationalist opinion and forfeiting international sympathy.

“They would have nowhere to go, no political future, no place in the shaping of a future for Ireland, no hope of any access ever to any political dialogue or to any sharing of political power.”