Alec Reid: Funeral For 'Peacemaker' Priest

By Vicki Hawthorne, Ireland Correspondent

The funeral of a priest, widely accepted as having played a major role in the Northern Ireland peace process, has taken place in west Belfast.

Father Alec Reid, 82, a Redemptorist priest originally from Dublin, died last Friday.

He has been described as "the midwife of the peace process" and "model peacemaker" for his work acting as a secret intermediary between the IRA and the British and Irish governments in the 1980s. 

The funeral mass was held at Clonard Church off the Falls Road in west Belfast, where he served as a priest for 40 years.

Father Michael Kelleher said: "Father Alec loved the people and the streets around here. He loved the people of Belfast.

"He said that whatever he learned about peace-making, he learned on these streets between 1968 and 1998.

"Father Alec's friend Mary McAleese invited him to meet with Queen Elizabeth. He gave the thumbs up to Her Majesty - I'm not sure that anybody had ever done that to Her Majesty before."

Friends and colleagues carry Father Alec's coffin after the service

He added: "For Father Alec, dialogue involved face to face communication between people who are in conflict with each other for reasons that have to do with historical, political or cultural differences that are causing death and destruction on the streets.

"Dialogue was a search for the common ground that would form the basis of an agreement between them."

Father Reid witnessed the worst of the Troubles living and working in the republican community which was the IRA's heartland.

He gained the trust of the IRA leadership as well as other politicians allowing him to facilitate secret discussions which paved the way for the IRA ceasefire in 1995 and eventually the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

His work came to shocking prominence in 1988, when he was photographed praying over the stripped and beaten bodies of two undercover soldiers who were murdered by the IRA after they accidentally stumbled into a republican funeral cortege in west Belfast. 

In the pictures from that day, Father Reid is seen kneeling on the wet ground, giving the last rites to one of the soldiers.

Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were among the mourners

In one photograph the priest is looking at the camera and his face is etched with pain, shock and devastation. 

The picture is one of the most horrific and memorable of that time in Northern Ireland.

Father Reid revealed afterwards that on that day he had in his pocket a secret letter from Gerry Adams to the leader of the SDLP, John Hume. The envelope was splattered in the blood from the soldiers.

Father Reid became a close friend and confidant of Sinn Fein leader Mr Adams, and was often pictured at his side. They remained close until Father Reid's death last week.

While the priest was close to the republican community, he worked tirelessly with other church leaders to develop cross-community relationships in Northern Ireland. 

John Hume also attended the service

He was trusted by both sides, so much so, that he was one of the independent representatives chosen to witness IRA decommissioning of weapons in 2005. 

Very few details of what the witnesses saw has ever been revealed, but Rev Harold Good who was with Father Reid that day said that when the last rifle was handed over, Father Reid turned to him and said: "There goes the last gun out of Irish politics."

However, the priest angered unionists when he lost his temper at a public meeting in 2005 and compared the Protestant community to the Nazis. He later apologised, but for some his comments were unforgivable.

Among the mourners at the funeral mass at Clonard Church were Mr Adams and Martin McGuinness, former Irish president Mary McAleese, former SDLP leader and Nobel Prize winner John Hume.

There were also representatives from the Democratic Unionist Party and the Ulster Unionist Party, the Irish government as well as church leaders from across the community in Northern Ireland.

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