The diocese of Armagh has appealed for the discovery of the remains of the victims of the civil war during the conflict in Northern Ireland. The appeal was made at the request of the independent Commission, set up in 1999 with the task of finding the bodies of those killed during the conflict and is prominently displayed in all the parishes of the diocese. It is supported by the Archbishop, Sean Brady, who is also Catholic Primate of Ireland. Other dioceses intend to follow suit. The list of the victims, assassinated and secretly buried by Republican armed groups in the 1970s, also include Seamus Ruddy; his sister, in an interview with the BBC, declared that she “hopes to find the body of her brother and that the bishops’ appeal would help to prick the conscience of someone”. “The appeal – explained Archbishop Brady – has a pastoral and not a political value. The families of the victims ask for nothing more than the remains of their loved ones so as to be able to give them a decent burial”. What makes the work of trying to find the remains so difficult, according to Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, who heads the Commission, is “especially the long period of time that has elapsed and the fact that these executions were committed at night, in isolated places or in terrain removed in more recent decades”.
