Detective McDonald speaks of forgiveness in tragic Omagh during Ireland visit

By PETER W. SLUYS

At a public square in Omagh, Northern Ireland--where he prayed with the people who survived last month's horrible terrorist bombing, and for their injured and their dead--New York Police Detective Steven McDonald personified the message he brought to the brokenhearted town: that the love of Christ and the power of forgiveness can change lives shattered by acts of hatred and violence.

"I wanted to share my simple message of forgiveness," said McDonald, who was paralyzed 12 years ago by a theft suspect's bullet in Central Park.

McDonald's first trip to Ireland, where he was invited to speak of healing and reconciliation, began just five days after the Aug. 15 bombing by an Irish Republican Army splinter group that killed 28 and injured more than 200 in Omagh.

And although his message resonated throughout the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, in personal appearances and on television, it was in Omagh that it was heard most poignantly and personally.

The site where McDonald prayed, outside Omagh's courthouse, was the spot where authorities expected the blast, based on a warning phone call from the bombers, and the area had been cleared of people. But whether by mistake or design, the explosion took place on a nearby street--where residents had been herded by police trying to protect them.

Father Kevin Mullan, an Omagh priest who met McDonald, his wife, Patti Ann, and 11-year-old son, Conor, on their Aug. 26 arrival in the town, told CNY, "We're kind of empty right now; too many people just need love. It's so much more than people can give."

McDonald brought words of love and more--praying with Father Mullan at the courthouse, and then being pushed in his wheelchair by former Northern Ireland Police Officer Joe Peake down the main street of the crowded market town.

As he passed shops banked with floral tributes to the dead and injured, storekeepers and passersby who lost friends and family approached to speak privately with him of their suffering.

McDonald--who, shortly after being gravely injured in 1986, forgave his teenage attacker, Shavod Jones--shared with them his own experience of suffering, reconciliation and healing.

"I know peace is going to come there, but the majority of the people are not focusing on a common faith, praying with a common faith," McDonald said after his return this week.

"Patti Ann, Conor and I and our friends thought that if we could all share ourselves, and in particular my story...it could leave a spark, and maybe inspire others to do the same."

Joining the McDonalds on the Aug. 20-28 trip was a close friend, Father Mychal F. Judge, O.F.M., of St. Francis of Assisi parish in Manhattan; Nyack lawyer Dennis Lynch, who arranged much of the schedule, and members of the Bruderhof community in Ulster County, with whom McDonald became acquainted in New York and who arranged his visits to Protestant groups in Ireland.

On their schedule were visits to Glencree and Dublin in Ireland and to Belfast in the north.

The 41-year-old detective and his family also went to Northern Ireland's Maze prison, where they visited Joe Doherty, the IRA prisoner who escaped to the U.S. in 1982, then spent nearly nine years in Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center fighting deportation.

In Dublin, McDonald met with Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and Archbishop Desmond Connell, and in Glencree he addressed a gathering that included Britain's ambassador to Ireland, Veronica E. Sutherland.

He met in Belfast with Martin McGuinness, a top official of Sein Fein, the political arm of the IRA, whose leaders have condemned the Omagh bombing.

He also met with Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan, of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and with disabled members of the RUC, the mainly Protestant Northern Ireland police force long despised by the province's Catholics, who view it as a symbol of British-Protestant dominance.

At the gathering of officers, McDonald spoke of having forgiven his own attacker, and how powerful the ideal of forgiveness had become in his own life.

He spent a few special moments with RUC Officer Sean Hughes, a Catholic who was shot in the head by an IRA gunman on the day of his son's baptism and who now, like McDonald, uses a wheelchair.

McDonald's Aug. 25 visit with Doherty at the Maze prison complex outside Belfast had the air of a family reunion for the pair, who first met while Doherty was held in New York. McDonald was among a large number of Irish-Americans championing the legal struggle of Doherty--who was seeking U.S. political asylum at the same time as the government was trying to deport him.

Doherty is serving a life sentence on charges of killing a British commando captain during a 1980 gunfight with an IRA unit.

At the prison, Doherty hugged McDonald and his wife, and tousled Conor's hair, eagerly listening to his plans to switch from playing soccer to football in the coming school year.

Doherty spoke about forgiveness and reconciliation with McDonald, and about IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, who starved to death protesting conditions in the Maze in 1981.

"There are those who say that Bobby Sands wouldn't support the peace agreements today if he were alive," Doherty said. "I know better.

"I have spoken to all of Bobby's friends who survived the hunger strikes, and they have told me that they support the peace agreements. This peace agreement is the only way to a new future for Ireland."

Doherty told McDonald that Ireland's "future needs the message of peace and reconciliation that you are bringing to us."

The McDonalds spent more than an hour with Doherty in a room in the hospital wing of the prison, some 300 feet from the ward where Sands died.

"That was a powerful experience," McDonald told CNY.

In a strange twist, Sands' brother-in-law, Michael McKevitt, is said to be the leader of the IRA dissident group called the Real IRA, which admitted the Omagh bombing and then declared it would observe a ceasefire.

McDonald's message to Doherty was essentially the same one he delivered throughout his visit: "God continuously forgives us as only he can forgive. We have to develop and maintain the capacity to imitate his forgiveness, for deep in our hearts we know that lacking forgiveness we lack the power to love."

It was his theme at a reconciliation center in Glencree, where he met on the afternoon of Saturday, Aug. 22--exactly one week after the bombing--with a group working for peace.

The meeting/prayer service was planned to observe the week anniversary of the bombing, on a day during which all of Ireland observed a moment of silence at 3:10 p.m.

Leading a prayer at the service, McDonald said, "Omagh, a peaceful city in Ireland, is now known the world over because of the powerfully evil hearts of those who hate and tear down the good that is being accomplished through the peace agreement."

He prayed: "God, you can melt their hearts and open their minds to turn to you in love...United with our family in Omagh we beg your forgiveness, plead for your love, ask for total respect for each other so that we may begin again to walk in your presence, put aside our hate for our neighbors, and love each other as you love us."

Other highlights of the visit included a walk through Belfast's Flagstaff Square park, where four bedraggled homeless people pooled their few coins to buy the hero detective a candy bar and a get-well card. One of them, an elderly woman dressed in rags, bent over his wheelchair and kissed his hand.

McDonald gave each of them a cross made of nails, symbolizing Christ's suffering and crucifixion, which he said would help them remember "how much Jesus loves us, and how much he sacrificed and suffered for us."

On Aug. 23, McDonald addressed a gathering at a Methodist church in an East Belfast area where there has been much Protestant para-military activity. When they learned he was Catholic, he said, "they couldn't believe that I had come to speak to them."

"I think they were touched that a Catholic came to talk to them about peace and forgiveness and the importance of Jesus' love," he said.

Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein's chief negotiator who participated in the delicate negotiations leading to the Good Friday peace accord, thanked McDonald for coming to Ireland and for bringing a message which now is "more important than ever as we move forward with the peace agreement."

Dublin's Archbishop Connell, who told McDonald that Cardinal O'Connor had written to him about the visit, said, "I am deeply moved by your message of forgiveness and reconciliation, and by your great courage."