Common Ground

Death threats against Fr Aidan Troy over Holy Cross protests taken seriously by police, records show

The Wicklow-born priest did not want to move because news of the threat would scare local children

The pupils of Holy Cross, north Belfast are escorted from school by their parents and RUC Officers in riot gear. Photograph: PA
The pupils of Holy Cross, north Belfast are escorted from school by their parents and RUC Officers in riot gear. Photograph: PA
Mon Dec 30 2024 - 00:01

Death threats against Fr Aidan Troy over the Holy Cross school protests led the Irish government to offer the Ardoyne-based priest accommodation in Belfast away from north Belfast.

The north Belfast school came to international attention from June 2001 when Catholic children were seen nightly on their way to school cowering in the arms of parents from insults and missiles thrown by loyalist protesters.

The bitter protests continued in September that year when hundreds of loyalist protesters tried to stop the children from going to the school, which stands in what is now a largely Protestant part of the city.

In January 2002 a street fight between a Catholic and a Protestant outside the school led to significant rioting in Ardoyne and attacks on other Catholic schools in north Belfast, but the issue faded from then on from the public view.

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However, a Department of Foreign Affairs file from January 2023 published in the State papers now shows that two credible death threats using accepted code words were made against Fr Troy a year later.

The warnings against the priest and the school’s board of management were made by a group that called itself the Orange Volunteers, made separately to the BBC and to the Samaritans.

A day later, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) came to Fr Troy and told him they had intelligence that his life was in danger from loyalist paramilitaries and “that he was to be shot before Monday”.

The police offered full security but advised that he not stay in the Ardoyne. However, the Bray, Co Wicklow-born priest said he did not wish to leave, fearing that the disclosure of the threat against him would scare the schoolchildren.

“I said to him if the police were treating the threat seriously and as it was based on police intelligence he should take it seriously,” Belfast-based Foreign Affairs official Tom Lynch told his Iveagh House-based superior, Michael Collins.

Foreign Affairs then offered Fr Troy the use of an apartment it had leased in Belfast which would still mean that he would be in contact with his congregation, but not live in the parish house where he was most at risk.

However, he decided not to accept the offer, but did move into a room in the local monastery. Subsequently, Northern Ireland Office officials agreed a security plan with the PSNI’s Oldpark station to ensure a rapid reaction to any threat against him.