Posted by Jim on September 6, 2017
The Klan is known mainly for its racism, but it also long harbored a virulent strain of anti-Catholicism
Jonathan Wright. Catholic Herald. London. Saturday, September 2, 2017
[Jonathan Wright is an honorary fellow in the department of theology and religion at Durham University. His book Layered Landscapes: Early-Modern Sacred Space Across Faiths and Cultures, co-edited with Eric Nelson, is published by Routledge,]
During its 1920s heyday the Ku Klux Klan was unremitting in its hostility towards Catholicism. As one Arkansas member put it, the loyalty of Catholics was “across the sea and the religion they profess is a foreign religion … the quicker we invite them to go back to the other side of the big pond the better it will be for us”. A typically rabid editorial in one of the Klan’s many periodicals – with the suitably sinister headline “To Your Guns!” – hammered the point home to its readership: “Drop not your fiery cross but carry it over vale and hill till pagan Roman Catholicism is expelled from our fair and free American life forever.”
The Klan pursued a goal of what it termed “100 per cent Americanism” and Caleb Riley explained why this made detestation of the Pope obligatory: “I am an Anglo-Saxon white man, and so constituted and trained that I cannot conscientiously take either my politics or my religion from some secluded ass on the other side of the world.” A Klan member from Mississippi was more succinct: he had no time for “that old dago by the Tiber”.
The fantastical allegations came thick and fast. Every time a Catholic father had a son he would add a rifle to the arsenal stored in the basement of his local church. It paid to be prepared for the great Catholic insurrection that was sure to come. After all, who could fail to notice that two antique cannon at Georgetown University in Washington were pointed directly at the Capitol Building? Worse yet, the Pope had already bought lands close to DC and was planning a “million-dollar mansion” from which he could mastermind the overthrow of the government.
At North Manchester, Indiana, a rumour once circulated that the pope was on board a train from Chicago so Klan members duly assembled at the station in the hope of giving the Pontiff what-for. In Florida, Governor Sidney J Catts, supported by the KKK, spent an inordinate amount of time travelling through his fiefdom warning of an imminent papal invasion of the state.
Ahead of the cataclysm, the Klan explained, Catholics would do their level best to ruin public morals and undermine American values. Klan audiences in the 1920s were routinely treated to speeches by women who claimed to be former nuns: they would often display leather bags in which, it was alleged, the newborn children of illicit liaisons between nuns and priests were carried to church furnaces to be cremated. Did people not realize, a Klan member in Sacramento asked, that “nearly all the bawdy houses, bootleg joints and other dives are owned or controlled by Romanists”?
Tragically, these were not simply the ravings of a fringe group. During the 1920s the Klan was extraordinarily successful.
Its membership probably topped four million and it was spread across all 48 states: 700,000 in Indiana, in the region of 400,000 in Texas and Ohio. The Klan was part of the mainstream of American politics, perfectly capable of determining the outcome of elections great and small.
Campaigns were launched against the provision of federal funds to Catholic parochial schools and Catholic teachers
in the public sector were hounded; in Atlanta, members of the school board who refused to follow the Klan’s whims had their lives threatened.
In some places, the Klan’s power went largely unchecked. When, in 1921, a man confessed to killing a Catholic priest in broad daylight, the jury in Birmingham, Alabama, mostly made up of Klan members, blithely acquitted him. Elsewhere, tensions between the Klan and its opponents boiled over. At Lilly, Pennsylvania, in 1924, a Klan rally descended into chaos and four people died. Twenty-nine rioters, all but four of them Klansmen, were arrested. In Niles, Ohio, when the Klan erected one of its burning crosses in front of a church, local Catholics burned tires outside Klan members’ houses. Such was the pitch of reciprocal violence and menace in Lafayette, Louisiana, that the local bishop urged his flock not to take “cheap revenge upon the Klan”.
By the end of the 1920s, the KKK had managed to divide the Democratic Party and had played a major role in derailing the Catholic Al Smith’s bid for the presidency, but its period of widespread political influence evaporated almost as quickly as it had arrived. The rants continued, of course, just as local politics could sometimes be infected by the Klan’s activities, and the memories of the terrible 1920s would leave deep wounds.
It was important for American Catholics to remember the stories of men like Pearce DeBardeleben, a Catholic store owner from Sylacauga, Alabama, who, in April 1921, was dragooned to the woods by Klan members, flogged with leather straps and punched so brutally that he lost most of his teeth.
The ugly nostrums that allowed the KKK to reach such giddy heights of influence may no longer be bandied about the corridors of power, but it would be remiss of American Catholics to assume that they have entirely disappeared.
Jonathan Wright is an honorary fellow in the department of theology and religion at Durham University. His book Layered Landscapes: Early-Modern Sacred Space Across Faiths and Cultures, co-edited with Eric Nelson, is published by Routledge
Posted by Jim on
VISUAL MISREPRSENTATION: More than 200
complaints were logged by RTE over its use of a map
of Ireland on which the north was conspicuously absent
Bimpe Archer. Irish News.Belfast.Tuesday, September 5, 2017
MORE than 200 complaints were logged by RTÉ over its use of a map of Ireland on which the north was conspicuously absent.
The broadcaster confirmed the extent of the negative feedback it received yesterday.
“A total of 203 complaints have been received in relation to the data map used on The Late Late Show segment on
Ireland’s Health Divide on Friday night,” a spokesman said.
“RTÉ will respond to these complaints within 20 days, in keeping with RTÉ complaints procedure established under the Broadcasting Act 2009.
“In addition, 33 viewers contacted RTÉ Information offering negative feedback.”
The appearance of the map on Friday night’s The Late Late Show prompted a storm of criticism from nationalists both north and south of the border, as well as some more mocking comments on social media.
Among the joking suggestions were that the image represented an ‘after’ picture following last month’s serious flooding or a future Brexit hard border.
RTÉ has insisted that the map was merely serving as a visual representation of the 2016 census results which consists of data solely from the Republic.
However, that has not satisfied critics who branded it “deeply offensive” and “rank partitionism”
Posted by Jim on September 4, 2017
Luke Coppen.The Spectator. London.Saturday, September 2, 2017
(Luke Coppen is editor of the Catholic Herald. London)
Among yesterday’s tributes to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, one stood out. It came not from a churchman, but from one of Britain’s most divisive politicians. Tony Blair described the late cardinal as a ‘wonderful advertisement’ for Christianity.
Now, you might expect a well-known Catholic to say something like that. Some reports did, after all, present Murphy-O’Connor as the man who ‘converted’ the New Labour leader. But while it’s true that the cardinal received Blair into the Catholic Church months after the latter resigned as prime minister, their relationship was complicated. Together they helped to decide the place of Catholics in Britain today – and not in an entirely happy way.
At the beginning of 2007 the cardinal wrote to Blair asking for an exemption from new gay adoption laws. The Cabinet said no, forcing the Church to shut or cut ties with its adoption agencies. The cardinal was furious. In one of our last email exchanges, earlier this year, he confirmed that he still felt strongly about it a decade later.
At times he seemed to blame Blair. But he also recognised that the prime minister’s authority had, by then, all but drained away. There was a small ‘Catholic tendency’ in the Cabinet, but a larger secularist one, led by ministers like Alan Johnson, who had lost a scuffle with the Catholic bishops over church schools a year earlier.
When Murphy-O’Connor succeeded the sainted Basil Hume as Archbishop of Westminster, he took up Hume’s quest to lead Catholics back into the establishment. He did well at first. In 2002, after the Queen Mother’s death, he became the first cardinal in centuries to read at an English royal funeral. That year he was also the first Catholic cleric to preach to the reigning monarch since 1688.
But his tussle with the Blair cabinet confirmed a new reality. The establishment was no longer exclusively Anglican, but it was embracing a new belief system – secular liberalism – that was no less hostile towards the Catholic Church. Hume had glimpsed a place at the heart of British affairs for Catholics; Murphy-O’Connor had discovered that it didn’t exist after all.
But he didn’t give up easily. He considered an offer by Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, of a seat in the House of Lords. He even rehearsed the opening of his first speech (‘As my predecessor, Cardinal Pole, was saying…’) But almost five centuries after Pole’s death, Rome had a different attitude to earthly power and vetoed the idea.
‘There is still a sense that being Catholic is different,’ the cardinal told me after his retirement. ‘You’re not part of the establishment and most Catholics wouldn’t want to be.’ If, in order to gain admission, he was required to abandon Catholic teaching, then ultimately he preferred to remain an outsider.
Posted by Jim on September 3, 2017
BBC NI ‘had bias against Catholics’ during Troubles, claims veteran journalist Dillon
Claire McNeilly. Belfast Telegraph. Saturday, September 2, 2017
A legendary BBC NI journalist has accused his former employers of being biased against Catholics and nationalists during the Troubles.
Martin Dillon, who worked as a reporter and producer at the corporation during the worst years of violence, claimed that the BBC “paid scant regard to Nationalist culture or social injustice” at that time, so much so that one of his colleagues described himself as the “token Catholic”.
The renowned author also revealed that, on getting to Ormeau Avenue, he was amazed to witness senior BBC NI executives holding an annual drinks party with Unionist politicians to celebrate the ‘Twelfth’ parade marching past the building.
And Mr. Dillon, an 18-year corporation veteran who introduced the then groundbreaking Talkback programme to Radio Ulster over 30 years ago, further claimed that the Beeb’s Northern Ireland newsroom “relied almost exclusively on information supplied by RUC and British Army press offices”.
His explosive claims, in a new book about his career out on Monday, were challenged by ex-Radio Ulster chief Don Anderson, who told the Belfast Telegraph that it was actually loyalists, not nationalists, who believed that the BBC was biased against them.
Mr Dillon left Northern Ireland 25 years ago following death threats from paramilitaries and now resides in the USA.
He wrote in Crossing The Line: My Life On The Edge that BBC NI tended to appoint mostly high-profile unionist figures – including a former NI Prime Minister’s wife – to the role of Governor, and further accused them of needlessly destroying precious archive film footage of the early days of the Troubles.
“I always felt the BBC did itself a disservice by appointing heavily politicised figures from one community to the role of overseeing broadcasting in Northern Ireland,” he writes. Recalling his attempts to retrieve BBC archive film of the late Brian Faulkner, who would become Northern Ireland’s most senior politician, marching through a predominantly Catholic area of Co Down in the Fifties – because he “believed the footage of Faulkner provided a singularly potent image of how Unionist and Orange Order triumphalism of the period asserted itself” – Mr Dillon said he was “reliably informed” that it had been gifted to his wife when she [Mrs. Faulkner] retired as BBC NI Governor.
He adds: “I informed Lady Faulkner I needed to locate the film. She was not helpful. At the same time, I discovered that most of BBC Northern Ireland’s archive film footage of past political events, including the early days of the Troubles, had been destroyed in the 1970s.”
Mr Dillon said that when he mentioned this, “others hinted the archive was destroyed ‘by mistake'”. They also said “‘somebody’ had given permission to get rid of unnecessary archive files, and the person charged with the task destroyed a large number of files representing a vitally important record.”
Another of the ‘Shankill Butchers’ author’s claims is that a senior BBC NI editorial figure was well-known for refusing to interview a priest in case he upset his friends in the Orange Order. And he reveals: “Others saw Catholics as the source of the violence. These views had the cumulative effect of ensuring BBC news personnel had no lines of communication into the Catholic community.”
Mr. Dillon said his then boss, Cecil Deeney, “was one of a small number of Catholics working in BBC NI programming, and that “there was some truth” when another colleague, Terry Sharkey, once joked about being a token Catholic at the Corporation.
He admits that he was “amazed” when BBC bosses gathered with Unionist politicians and dignitaries to celebrate the Twelfth on the sixth floor of Broadcasting House.
And, during the Ulster Workers Strike in the Seventies, he recalls being “asked by Dick Francis and Ronald Mason to use my paramilitary contacts to acquire UDA passes to get BBC executives through paramilitary roadblocks”.
But the award-winning Falls Road native reserved some of his harshest criticism for the late James Hawthorne, BBC Controller in the late Seventies and Eighties, whom he claimed tried to influence the way he reported the contentious Anglo-Irish Agreement.
“A year had passed since the implementation of the Agreement,” he writes. “Unionists bitterly opposed it, and I found myself facing criticism from some BBC figures for allowing Unionists to appear on the airwaves to voice their opposition to it.
“One evening, James Hawthorne summoned me to his office to express his displeasure with my coverage of the Agreement. He stressed that I should not forget I was employed by the British Broadcasting Corporation.
“Without issuing an editorial edict, he was in effect telling me, in an underhand way, to get in line with British government policy.”
Don Anderson, who was Mr Dillon’s immediate editorial boss at one time, told the Belfast Telegraph that “loyalists did not like the BBC”.
“Reporters and camera crews working on the streets were quite often attacked by loyalist crowds because they believed the BBC was biased against them,” he said.
“When I was a reporter I was shot at by a loyalist with a revolver. Luckily, it missed.”
Mr Anderson added: “Only Martin can say whether or not James Hawthorne told him to adhere to British policy when it came to reporting on the peace process.”
Dr Hawthorne, who was controller from 1979 to 1989, died in 2006.
Mr Dillon, now in his late 60s, is one of the foremost chroniclers of the Troubles.
A former Belfast Telegraph reporter, he wrote his first book, Political Murder in Northern Ireland, when he was still working for newspapers.
He joined the BBC in the Seventies as a reporter and was later promoted to programme editor. His books include The Shankill Butchers, The Dirty War and God and the Gun.
A BBC spokesman said: “BBC Northern Ireland is proud of its role in reflecting and serving the entire community.
“Accounts of people and events in the past will sometimes differ – and may even be disputed. We cannot comment on the specifics of an unpublished book at this stage.”
Posted by Jim on September 2, 2017
IRA Volunteer Tom Williams was hanged at age 19 by the British on 2
September 1942, 75 years ago today, for his part in a gun battle with
the RUC which left one RUC man dead
‘Executed: Tom Williams and the IRA’, was written by Jim McVeigh. He
writes: “If the history of this small island were compared to a rich
tapestry, then Tom Williams’ story would only be the faintest of
threads. Yet it is a remarkable story and deserves to be told.” The
following are extracts from the book.
Boyhood
Thomas Joseph Williams was born in number 6 Amcomri Street in the
Beechmount area of Belfast on the 12th May 1923. This was a year of
pogroms. Through 1920, 1921, 1922 and into 1923, small Catholic enclaves
right across Belfast came under vicious attack from rampaging Orange
mobs, sometimes with the support of the new forces of the state. Before
moving to Beechmount, Tom’s family had fled the small Catholic enclave
in the Shore Road area of Belfast after their houses were attacked and
burnt.
Tom’s uncle, Terry Williams had been jailed for helping to defend the
Shore Road area from sectarian attack and from his earliest age Tom grew
up hearing these stories of persecution and resistance. But this was
more than folklore – discrimination and sectarian violence continued to
be a daily reality for Catholics in the northern state.
Tom was the third child of a family of six. His brother Richard was the
eldest, followed by Mary, who died of meningitis at the age of three.
Tom was next and then baby Sheila, who died shortly after birth. Indeed
Tom’s mother Mary died shortly after giving birth to Sheila at the young
age of 29, leaving Tom in the care of his father, Thomas. Life was hard
and early death commonplace at that time, especially among children.
Tom, who was still only a toddler, and his brother Richard went to live
with their Granny Fay at 46 Bombay Street in the Clonard area of
Belfast. A great bond of love and affection was to develop between Tom
and his granny and it was upon her knee and in this small district that
he began to learn of the struggle for Irish independence.
As soon as he was old enough, Tom joined Na Fianna Eireann, the
republican scout organisation founded by Countess Markievicz in 1909,
becoming a member of the Con Culbert slua in the Clonard area. Alfie
Hannaway, a boyhood friend of Tom’s and his OC in Na Fianna, remembers
appointing Tom to the rank of Quarter Master for the Company.
The C Company slua, which comprised over 30 boys from the district,
spent much of their time drilling, in fitness activities and on occasion
scouting for the IRA.
Manhood
For most working class Catholics, discrimination meant that employment
opportunities were limited, and Tom was only able to find work as a
message boy and as a labourer. He worked for a period in Greeves’ mill
and even found work in the Docks area in the aircraft factory there.
In the months before his arrest, he worked in a printing firm. Almost
everywhere he worked his sincere and friendly personality as well as his
willingness to work hard, endeared him to his workmates and employers.
These were qualities which would impress almost all who met him.
As soon as he was of age, Tom joined the IRA and at 17 became a
Volunteer in C Company in the Clonard area where he lived. At the time,
C Company’s area of command ran the length of the Lower Springfield
Road, along the Falls Road from Beechmount to Conway Street,
encompassing the streets in between. By the time Tom joined the IRA in
1940, it was already two years into its campaign and feeling the effects
of arrests on both sides of the border.
Like most other young Volunteers, Tom was an enthusiastic supporter of
this campaign and was probably ignorant of the growing difficulties the
IRA leadership were facing. When Britain declared war on Germany on
Sunday 3 September 1939, many republicans, including the young Tom,
believed that the war presented the IRA with an opportunity to strike.
Tom was soon appointed Adjutant of C Company and in the months before
his final arrest, at the young age of 18, he became the officer
Commanding. In 1942 C Company had seven Sections with around ten
Volunteers in each Section. His appointment to the rank of Company OC
was a considerable responsibility for one so young.
Comrade
Easter has an important place in the republican calendar, and in 1942,
Belfast republicans were determined to commemorate the 1916 Rising. The
problem was that since the 1920s republican parades of any description
had been banned. It was decided by the IRA leadership in Belfast that
three separate Easter parades would be held and that a number of
diversionary operations would be carried out in other areas across
Belfast.
Tom, as the OC of C Company, was instructed by his Battalion staff to
make the necessary preparations for an operation in the Clonard area. A
volley of shots was to be fired over an RUC patrol car that regularly
passed by the corner of Clonard Gardens and the Kashmir Road and the
Volunteers were to withdraw safely.
In the days preceding the operation, Tom selected and briefed those
Volunteers who would take part; eight in total, including Tom himself.
The youngest of the group, Margaret Nolan, was just 16 years old, the
oldest 21. They met on the day of the operation and around 2.30pm took
up their allotted positions.
Shortly after 3pm, an RUC patrol car carrying four constables turned
into Clonard Street and headed towards the junction of Clonard gardens
and the Kashmir Road. All four [RUC men] were armed with their service
revolvers; in addition McMahon carried a pump action shotgun.
As the Ford V Light car passed the junction into Clonard Gardens, Tom
and his comrades opened fire. One of the bullets struck the car,
smashing a rear window but missing the occupants.
Constable Williamson accelerated into Clonard Gardens, where instead of
hastily driving away, Lappin, McMahon and Murphy alighted, drew their
weapons and set off at a run back towards Cawnpore Street and the scene
of the shooting. The stage was now set for a confrontation that would
have far reaching and tragic circumstances.
As the last of the IRA group entered the back kitchen [of number 53],
they alerted Tom and the rest of the group to the presence of the RUC on
their tail, within seconds all hell broke loose in the tiny back kitchen
and scullery. In the controversial statement that Tom later made to the
RUC while in hospital, he described what happened:
“I ran into the scullery.There is a little glass enclosure in the yard
and from the scullery window I could see a policeman coming into this
enclosure with his gun drawn. When he was about three yards from me and
beside the kitchen window, I pointed my revolver at his body and fired
one shot. He staggered and fired back and I fired four or five more
shots at his body.”
At least two other weapons were fired. According to forensic evidence
given at the trial, three of the rounds that struck Murphy were fired
from a Webley revolver, the weapon fired by Tom, and two others from the
short Webley. Before being fatally wounded in the heart, Murphy fired
three rounds from his revolver, whilst the fourth misfired. All three
rounds found their mark, striking Tom in his left thigh and once in his
left forearm.”
Prisoner
“Following their arrest, all eight were eventually charged with
Murphy’s killing. The two young women were moved to Armagh Jail, while
the men were taken to Crumlin Road Jail, except for Tom, who for the
moment lay under armed guard in the Royal Victoria Hospital.
Soon Tom was discharged from the jail hospital and joined his comrades
on the Wing. Joe Cahill recalls their first meeting. Tom appeared to be
`standoffish”. Sensing that something was wrong he spoke to Tom alone.
Upset, Tom explained that he had broken an IRA order and had made and
signed a statement to the RUC.
Tom said that while lying injured, he had been told by a doctor and by
members of the RUC that he was dying from loss of blood. Then, as now,
the IRA ordered its captured volunteers not to cooperate in any way with
the enemy authorities. Despite this, Tom decided to make a statement
accepting sole responsibility for the killing in the hope that it would
save the lives of his comrades.
The trial began on 28 July in number one court, Crumlin Road Courthouse.
Seated in the dock were Tom and his five comrades. Weeks before, the
charges of murder against their two women comrades had been dropped. The
younger of the two, Margaret Nolan, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge
and was released with a recorded sentence. Marge Burns was immediately
rearrested and interned in Armagh prison.
The defendants were represented by Cecil Lavery, reputed to be one of
the best defence barristers in Ireland at the time. On the prosecutors’
bench sat John Clarke McDermott, attorney general for the Six Counties.
McDermott was an ex Unionist MP and Stormont minister. Having served as
a British officer during the First World War, his unionist sympathies
prompted him to join the B Specials in the 1920s.
The trial judge’s unionist credentials were no less impeccable. A
committed unionist, Edward Sullivan Murphy was elected unionist MP for
Derry City in 1929. A proud and devoted Orangeman, he held the position
of deputy Grand Master within the Order for a number of years.”
Condemned
“The court was silent as the foreman, Thomas Stevenson, rose to read
the verdict. He declared, by a unanimous decision, that all six men were
guilty of murder but that in the case of Pat Simpson they were
recommending mercy because of his youth. On receiving the verdict of the
jury, all six young men stood to attention one by one and made a brief
statement.
Tom was the last to speak. In a loud and steady voice he declared: “I
am not guilty of murder. I am not afraid to die.” The black cap was
then placed on Murphy’s head and he passed sentence on the six. Almost
immediately an appeal was lodged on behalf of the six and the date of
execution was postponed pending its outcome.
Within a few short weeks of the trial, their appeal was heard by Judges
Babington, Andrews and Brown. On 21 August the previous verdict of the
court was upheld and the new date of execution set for 2 September.
Their only hope now lay with the Reprieve Campaign that was being
mounted on their behalf outside the prison.
The first act of the campaign was the gathering of a petition calling
for clemency. When the petition was handed to the Minister of Home
Affairs at Stormont on 21 August, it contained almost a quarter of a
million signatures. It was signed by prominent personalities such as
Cardinal McRory, three other Catholic bishops, hundreds of Catholic
priests and a large number of Protestant clergy, as well as Sean
MacBride and a considerable number of MPs and TDs.
Under pressure, de Valera instructed his government officials to
intervene on behalf of the six young IRA volunteers. U.S. Secretary of
State Cordell Hull took up the case with the British government. The
U.S. State Department was urged by Senate and Congressional leaders to
intervene. Even the Vatican intervened, pressing the British government
to reprieve the men.
On Sunday 30 August the Stormont government issued a statement through
the Governor of Northern Ireland. Shortly before the statement was
issued, Tom and his comrades were called to a legal visit. When they
entered the room they were sombrely greeted by their solicitor D.P.
Marrinan. He looked at each of them in turn and finally turned to Tom
and said: “I’ve good news for everyone except Tom.”
He then told them that all but Tom had been reprieved. There was a
stunned silence for a few moments, and then Tom was the first to speak:
“Don’t grieve for me, remember, from day on this is how I wanted it. I
wanted to die and I’m happy that you five are going to live.”
Martyr
“By all accounts, that September morning was shaded by a dark sullen
sky overheard. A silence lay across the jail. from the evening before, a
large crowd had gathered near the jail and in the hours before the
execution many of them knelt quietly in prayer. Throughout Ireland,
Catholic churches were filled to capacity for morning mass. In many
towns and cities, streets were blocked as hundreds and in some cases
thousands stood in silence as a mark of respect.
Tom rose early that morning, dressed, washed and shaved. At around
6.30am he celebrated mass with Fathers Alexis and Oliver and again at
7.15am with Fathers McAllister and McEnaney. Shortly before the stroke
of eight, the cell door opened and the two executioners entered,
accompanied by the prison governor and a number of prison and city
officials.
The main executioner, an Englishman, was Thomas Pierrepoint, assisted by
his nephew Albert. Pierrepoint bound Tom’s arms behind his back with a
long leather strap. As the buckle of the leather strap was fastened, the
two prison guards present moved to either side of a large wooden locker
which stood against one of the walls. The locker was lifted to reveal a
door – the door to the gallows. Without a falter in his step, Tom calmly
walked the last few paces of his life.
A half an hour after the execution, Tom’s five comrades were led from
their cells to the prison chapel. The jail was silent. So too was the
chapel, except for the sobs of the small group. One of the priests
present began to say Mass but broke down weeping. Another priest stood
up and continued with the Mass. When the ceremony was over, all present
gathered in the sacristy. It was Father Alexis who spoke. “I met the
bravest of the brave this morning.”