As predicted the report by the North’s Police Ombudsman has revealed that senior officials in the Northern Ireland Office and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) were aware in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack in 1972 (which killed nine innocent civilians) that a Catholic priest, Fr Jim Chesney, was a suspect.

Despite this knowledge, Fr Chesney was never arrested. In fact, it was decided at the highest levels of the British government that he would not be arrested. This decision was communicated to Cardinal William Conway, the then Primate of All-Ireland, by Britain’s Secretary of State for the region William Whitelaw. Since both men are dead we will never really know why this decision was made.

What we do know is that Fr Chesney was questioned by Church leaders about his potential involvement in the atrocity and strenuously denied that he had any involvement with the attack or other terrorism.

What is also clear is that shortly after the bombing Fr Chesney was transferred across the border, probably at the request of the British government or Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).

Today’s report will be welcomed by the families who have waited for too long to hear exactly what happened.

But there are still many unanswered questions. Why, for example, did the British authorities and RUC not wish to question Fr Chesney if they really believed he was a credible suspect?

What is also clear is that Cardinal Conway was placed in an impossible situation. The forces responsible for law and order (the British government and the RUC) were unwilling to question Fr Chesney. Why? The report doesn’t answer that key question.

It has long been speculated that the decision was made to avoid further sectarian strife. 1972 was one of the worst years during the civil conflict.
Some 500 people lost their lives in the violence and there were very real fears that the region could descent in to sectarian civil war. Some commentators have suggested that, were a priest to be arrested, it could mean that all Catholic priests would become targets of Loyalist death squads.

If this is the case, if this is the scenario that was put to Cardinal Conway (and we can only speculate) it placed him somewhere between a rock and a hard place. In any case, he was in no position to instruct the police how to carry out their investigation. It is not as if the Church has its own police force. If the people responsible for law and order are unwilling to pursue lines of inquiry there is nothing the Church can do.

If the scenario outlined above is realistic, Cardinal Conway was left to try and make a prudential judgement, what some might describe the lesser of two evils. I do not think it as simple as that. I do not think he had a choice. He was not able to compel the authorities to act in a particular fashion, and faced with the prospect of making all his clergymen potential targets, he had to make a difficult judgement call. Whether or not he was right to make the call he did, or whether his call amounted to a moral compromise too far is virtually impossible to judge in the absence of all the facts.

It’s also worth pointing out that no action of the Church ever amounted to a cover-up. That is to say no action engaged in by Cardinal Conway or other Church leaders impeded a legitimate investigation by the state authorities. As the Police Ombudsman pointed out, Fr Chesney visited the North dozens of times while serving in Donegal and was never questioned or arrested by the RUC. This too cannot be blamed on the Church.

Of course, the scenario outlined above, while highly plausible, is only educated speculation. It should also be pointed out that no real evidence has ever come forward to prove that Fr Chesney was involved. While there is certainly a lot to point towards this, the absence of a police investigation makes any definitive judgment impossible.

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