Church leaders will now attend Omagh victims service

Church leaders in Omagh have reversed their decision to stay away from a 10th anniversary service for victims of the bomb, it emerged today.

Clergy from the four main denominations in the town will now attend Sunday’s memorial event after initially rejecting an invitation from the victims’ families who are organising it.

Representatives from the town’s Presbyterian, Methodist, Church of Ireland and Catholic churches changed their stance after meeting last night to discuss the issue.

They had originally stated that they would only be attending a service on Friday – the date of the Real IRA bomb – organised by Omagh District Council.

However, families of at least 10 of the bomb’s 29 victims are boycotting that event amid a growing row over plans to mark the anniversary of the bloodiest atrocity in the history of the the North troubles.

The relatives are angry at how the council has handled the creation of new memorials in the town.

The family-run Omagh Support and Self Help group, which is organising the Sunday event, had heavily criticised the clergy for turning down its invite.

Monsignor Joseph Donnelly, from the Catholic church in Omagh, said he and the other church leaders had decided to re-examine the issue once it became clear a number of families would not be attending the Friday event.

He said they will now attend both.

“We have revisited the situation given the recent developments,” he said.

“We had originally put our weight behind the council ceremony in the hope that would be a unified event.

“But it has become clear in the last few weeks some families would have found attending that event extremely difficult.

“It is not for us to question what they are going through. This is a very difficult time for them.

“So our decision (to attend Sunday’s event) is a pastoral response to the situation.” Monsignor Donnelly said he was sad it had not been possible to hold one event.

“Our aspiration was for a unified ceremony but we are aware of the difficulties that many families have with the council ceremony,” he said.

Former Lebanon hostage Terry Waite will give an address at the council event on Friday.

In lieu of the four clergymen, the support group had asked a British Army padre based at Ballykinlar, Co Down and an Omagh-born Catholic priest who now ministers in Wales to officiate at their service on Sunday.

The town’s church leaders will now join them at the ceremony.

The families who are staying away from the Friday commemoration are unhappy at how the council dealt with the contentious issue of the wording for new memorials erected at the bomb site on the town’s Market Street and at a nearby garden of remembrance.

Members of the support group had demanded the retention of a phrase engraved on an original tribute stone, which has since been removed from the garden of remembrance, stating that the victims were “murdered by a dissident republican terrorist car bomb”.

The council appointed an independent fact finding team to try to resolve the issue and councillors unanimously accepted its recommendation to use the phrase on the walls of the garden of remembrance, but not on the glass obelisk at the bomb site.

It has defended its approach to the memorial issue.

Ten years on from the Omagh bomb the killers have never been caught, and police have been heavily criticised for their handling of the investigation.