After "Good Friday"” “

Five years exactly after the signing of the so-called “Good Friday agreement” between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland at Belfast on 10 April 1998 – the Good Friday from which it takes its name – the peace process in Ulster seems to be stalled. The elections to re-establish and revive the suspended Northern Ireland assembly – initially scheduled for 1st May but now announced for the end of May – indicate, however, some glimmers of light. Central, for the peace process, is the role played in the province by the Catholic and Anglican Churches. Churches and peace process. In spite of the contribution of the American administration to the peace process in recent years (especially that of Bill Clinton), the presence of Bush in Ulster for the Anglo-American summit on Iraq at Hillsborough Castle on 7-8 April, was not welcomed by the Social Democratic Labour Party and by Sinn Fein, both opponents of the war in Iraq. The Irish religious authorities, both Catholic and Anglican, have been cautious in commenting on what they see as a fluid situation which “gives no clear indications of what will happen”. The Anglican archbishop of the diocese of Armagh, the Right Rev. Robert Eames, declared that the Belfast agreement of 10 April 1998 was “a decisive moment of great significance for the peace process in Northern Ireland”; of central importance, too, was the achievement of “power-sharing in government”. In response to the suspension of the self-governing institutions of Ulster, the archbishop pointed out that the Good Friday agreement is more like a “road map” than a “legal document drafted with word for word precision”. What matters, stressed Eames, are the “vision and the hope” that emerged “after intensive political negotiations”. Father John McManus, assistant of Catholic Archbishop of Belfast Patrick Walsh, explained that the Catholic Church continues to “encourage” the politicians to “forge a lasting peace for everyone through dialogue”. The task of the Catholic Church in this peace process is not to “interfere in politics”, added Father McManus, but “to build bridges between differences” so that “a future of peace may be created together”. The Churches – says the Anglican archbishop, echoing his words – “have worked strenuously” to “build bridges between the communities”, convinced that the Belfast agreement “offers the best solution for going forward”. But, comments Eames sadly, many “have failed to grasp the scale of the ‘vision’ of the agreement and so trust has often been lacking between the parties involved in the peace process. Now, the “primary role of the Churches is that of “healing divisions and restoring trust”. The Good Friday agreement. Reached following negotiations that involved not only the governments of the two countries but also ten political parties, the agreement was the result of a series of multilateral meetings spread over several years and was given strong support by the then American President Bill Clinton. The document consists of three parts: the first regulates institutional questions within Northern Ireland; the second establishes the relations between the Irish Republic and Ulster; while the third provides a new system of relations between the whole island of Ireland (Irish Republic and Ulster) and the rest of the United Kingdom. As a consequence, various institutions were created to perform these tasks: the Assembly and Executive of Northern Ireland; the North-South ministerial Council; the British-Irish Council; and the British-Irish intergovernmental Conference. A significant role was also accorded by the agreement to two Commissions: that for human rights and that for equality. The enormous value of the “Belfast Agreement” consists in the fact that, thanks to it, both the governments of Great Britain and Ireland have modified their respective conceptions of sovereignty over Northern Ireland. For the first time since the partition of the island in 1921, the political parties have chosen to tackle the conflict between the two opposing factions not with weapons, but with dialogue and the principle of consent.