MONSIGNOR Denis Faul has described Sister Sarah Clarke, the London based Irish nun who campaigned on behalf of the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six and the Maguire family, as the "greatest feminist" he had ever met.
The Dungannon priest was speaking in Belfast Castle last night, where he launched Sister Sarah's book, No Faith in the System, published by Mercier Press.
Two other books relating to the political and paramilitary situation, in theNorth were also launched in Belfast last night, one is about the Rev Ian Paisley, the other is about the dynamics of the Northern conflict.
Monsignor Faul criticised the Irish Hierarchy's treatment of Sister Sarah, whose work he has admired since 1972. He said when the Birmingham Six were released the Hierarchy thanked Cardinal Hume, the Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas and the Irish Chaplaincy in London. It omitted mention of Sister Sarah, which was "quite extraordinary", he said.
"But Sister Sarah has never looked for recognition from these important people. She long ago saw that only a few have the courage and guts to run with the poor in jail. The presumption is that the State is right, that English law especially is supreme - or was until Sister Sarah shattered it."
Monsignor Faul said that for more than 24 years the nun helped about 400 families, many of whom had nowhere else to turn. But yet she was an unacceptable person to the legal and church establishments "although Cardinal Hume came to see that she was right and just would not bow the knee to tyranny".
In a ringing endorsement, he added: "Read her book and thank God for Sister Sarah. She always wore the habit and cross she was given 60 years ago in Co Galway. She is the greatest feminist I have ever met.
"She came, saw and conquered the power - often devilish - of the secular world of a great pagan city in favour of the poor, not only Irish nationalists, but loyalists and ODCs, ordinary decent criminals.
"Why did she do it? She said the first saint in heaven was Dismas, the thief dying on the cross beside Jesus.
"She shattered the English legal system, and exposed all its faults, arrogance, class distinction, xenophobia, racism, and the use of brutality . . ."
"She is still fighting against the special diabolical conditions for Irish prisoners in English jails."
Also launched last night in the bookshop at Queen's University in Belfast was The Dynamks of Conflict in Northern Ireland by academics Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd. The book provides an account of the conflict, examines its dynamics and structures and proposes a "new approach to its resolution".
A portrait of the Rev Ian Paisley by Dennis Cooke, Persecuting Zeal, was also launched at the Linen Hall Library.
