February 2015
Women’s Witness Seminar Belfast.
Eleven religious sisters from a variety of Orders took part in this first Witness Seminar with several
more attending as observers behind the cameras. This was the first opportunity that religious sisters
had to speak of their experiences during the Troubles. As may be expected, the event was
extremely emotional and brought to mind experiences that many had not revisited for some time. It
was fascinating that at the start many sisters simply said they did their duty, they got on with their
work in an attempt to make things as normal for those they served as possible. They did not see
themselves as risk takers or as brave women.
As the event progressed and more stories came to light it became apparent that in keeping schools
open despite IRA orders to strike, attending soldiers shot on church steps, reporting bombs laid
across convent walls and opening the first integrated school in Northern Ireland, these women were
both brave and risk takers. Some of these actions often caused tension within their own orders as it
was apparent that not all sisters shared the same political allegiances, while all rejected violence. A
fascinating insight was from sisters who had been sent to Northern Ireland from the south where
being Catholic was the norm and carried no mark of otherness with it. One sister spoke about how
she was overcome with fear and felt constantly under threat in Belfast and how, as the days passed,
she realised that she was in fact a Republican, a thought that had not been clear to her when living
in the South. A sister wept as she remembered the cries and screams of children as their parents
were taken away by the army- these memories are with her each night as she sleeps. Fr Raymond
Murray attended each person detained and recorded the levels of abuse each suffered even if only
temporarily detained, this too haunted Sr Margaret. The sisters did what they could to support
families who had a member ‘lifted’ as they called it since this would not only cause emotional
anguish but often economic hardship.
One sisters who lived on a ‘peace line’ in the Springfield Road where the front of the house faced the
Catholic side and the back the Protestant said one evening she saw young Protestant boys pouring
petrol through a letter box, when she went out to confront them they threw the petrol over her. I
asked how that felt and she answered ‘well I couldn’t see the matches so I suppose it didn’t sink in’.
A sister who lived in the same house recalled that more often than not when walking home they did
so under a hail of stones and bottles – all those there agreed this was a regular occurrence and
seemed perplexed that I seemed shocked. They all agreed that normality came to mean something
entirely different in their context and they took certain levels of threat and violence for granted.
They reflected on how they were constantly challenged in terms of their own preconceptions having
grown up in a society where contact with Protestants was limited, many said they had never met
one until they got involved in peace work. This ignorance and engrained attitude was of course on
both sides and was illustrated by Sr Kathleen who regularly visited a Mrs T, a Protestant elderly lady
who was a neighbour across the divide. These visits went on for years with much tea and chat but
talking one day Mrs T said ‘Catholics aren’t Christians but then Sister you don’t know that so it isn’t
your fault’, they continued to take tea together for many more years.
All agreed that the work of religious orders was not over, indeed that their presence and care is
needed as much as ever because all the years of conflict have left the population scarred and there
is a great deal of mental health issues in both populations.
February 2015
Sectarianism is alive and well. Politics relies on it and peace walls continue to be built. I was struck
by new housing developments with large green walls almost at their back doors. There are those
who welcome the presence of the walls, still not feeling safe enough to have communities back on
to each other without them. While others believe they just continue the divisions in an unhealthy
way. I was surprised to see Israeli flags in Loyalist areas and had it explained to me that many
Loyalists admire the way Israel ‘deals with’ the Palestinians and would like Catholics treated the
same way. For purposes of PR most murals from both sides are less aggressively paramilitary
although guns are still in evidence in many. It was an eye opener to me to see that Nationalist
murals also included international struggles not simply the Irish struggle.