Greg Daly
Fr Aidan Troy, a priest who came to prominence shielding local schoolgirls from loyalist mobs in Belfast, has said families are terrified by conflicts between police and protesters in Paris, and that dialogue is the only way of ending the violence.
Famous for his role in the Holy Cross Ardoyne protests in 2001, Passionist Fr Troy is now parish priest of St Joseph’s Church in Paris, where he served last weekend as Grand Marshall of the French capital’s second official St Patrick’s Day parade.
Apprehension
“It came the day after the horrendous trouble on the Champs Elysee so there was a certain amount of apprehension around another parade, but I must pay tribute to the police,” he told The Irish Catholic, praising them for discretely protecting and accompanying the parade along its route.
“It went from 500 to 5,000 in one year, and the joy and the happiness was just unreal,” he said, contrasting them with the “extremely tense” atmosphere in the city surrounding the Gilet jaunes – ‘yellow vests’ – protests.
“It’s been every week, this is the 17th or the 18th consecutive week,” he said, describing the wreckage of burnt and looted shops and businesses on the Champs Elysee on Saturday evening as “just so sad”.
“I just felt so sorry, and particularly for the small businesses – people are talking about the big shops, but I know people who have a little restaurant on a side street who can’t open. I know a family who’ve had to take their children up to Normandy every Saturday for the last three or four months because they’re afraid of the tear gas,” he said.
“I’ve lived through Belfast, I know what violence is like, and I know there’s no answer in violence of any sort,” he continued. “Eventually there’s going to have to be a conversation, a dialogue of some sort, to bring this to an end. It is extremely tense.”
Not best of times
Describing the atmosphere as “very scary, particularly for families”, Fr Troy said the church regularly gets phonecalls from parents worried about whether it is safe to bring their children to Mass.
“I always say ‘never put yourself in danger, but we are not going to close’, so they know we’re open, and if they can get here well and good,” he said, adding, “It’s not the best of times.”