Mags Gargan
A group of former republican prisoners has asked the bishops to clarify the rules around placing Irish tricolours on coffins inside churches during funerals in the North.
Flags and paramilitary trappings have been banned since the former Bishop of Derry, Dr Edward Daly took the decision in 1987 when shots were fired over the coffin of IRA man, Gerard Logue inside the grounds of St Columba’s Church in Derry.
The debate was reignited last month when the coffin of former Sinn Féin and Provisional IRA leader, Martin McGuinness was allowed into the same church draped in a tricolour.
Bishop of Derry, Dr Donal McKeown later said Mr McGuinness had been afforded “a comparable honour to that which would have been accorded to a former or serving head of state or government of Ireland (Uachtarán or Taoiseach)”.
“This is in recognition, not of an individual, but of a position that they held in public life,” he said.
Frank Dempsey from the Falls Cultural Society, a group of ex-prisoners who have been petitioning Church officials in recent years in an effort to have the rules around flags clarified, said the Church’s approach has been inconsistent.
“Martin McGuinness was allowed to have it and was entitled to it, why can’t every other Irishman,” he asked. “The problem is priests are all over the place, there is no consistency.”