Pope’s envoy tries to persuade Sands to end fast

Press, 30 April 1981, Page 8

Pope’s envoy tries to persuade Sands to end fast

NZPA Belfast A personal .emissary of the Pope spent an hour yesterday trying to persuade the I.R.A. hunger striker, Bobby Sands, to give up his 60-day-old hunger strike. But while there was no official indication as to his success, sources close to the Maze Prison said there had been “no dramatic result.” While the Rev. John Magee was at the Maze thousands of Protestant Loyalists took to the Belfast streets in a show of strength and sporadic rioting broke out in Republican parts of the city. Father Magee was hustled out of the prison by a side entrance and said by the police to have been driven towards the nearby village of Hillsborough. His destination was as yet not known. Sands’s election agent, Owen Carron, said: “He was as committed as ever, before this visit, and I cannot imagine him changing his mind unless they can deliver on the demands. “He will not come off his hunger strike until he gets those demands. “When he was visited by his family on Monday he gave them a clenched-fist salute and told them that a time for talking was over.” Republican sources said

that Sands was now lying on a water bed and was permanently under medical supervision. “His skin is deathly yellow, like parchment, and he has to be rubbed with cream every two hours to stop it breaking,’’ one supporter said. Earlier on his arrival at Belfast’s Aldergrove Airport Father Magee had met with Irelands Roman Catholic leader. Cardinal Tomas O’Fiaich, who played a major role in bringing to an end the pre-Christmas Maze hunger strike. However, Cardinal O’Fiaich did not go to the prison. Father Magee’s visit was a dramatic move by Pope John Paul 11, to try to avert what many politicians fear will be civil war in Northern Ireland. A taste of what may come was given as about 2500 Loyalists blocked off the side streets between the Shankhill and nearby Republican Falls Road area. They were claimed to be members of the Ulster Defence Association, the province’s main Protestant paramilitary group. And one of their leaders. Tommy Lyttle, said it was an exercise so that the men would know their posts' if they were at-

tacked. Several hundred police and troops staked out the area but did not interfere. In the Republican Short Strand, Old Park, Ardoyne, and New Lodge areas youths threw petrol bombs and stones at troops who replied with plastic bullets. No injuries were reported. Father Magee spent half-an-hour at Heathrow talking with a British Foreign Office Minister. Peter Blaker, before flying out to Belfast. Neither would comment. The Vatican reported from Rome that the Pope had decided to send him to see if it was possible to do anything “given the gravity of the situation in Northern Ireland.” The Foreign Office stressed it was not official Vatican intervention, but that the Pope wanted to demonstrate his “personal concern with the humanitarian aspects of the case.” The visit drew stinging criticism from some Ulster members of Parliament. One. Harold McCusker said, “I think it is very unwise of the Pope to involve himself. Did he send a representative to Germany to see the terrorist who starved himself to death there?”