Obituary: Father Alec Reid

Activist who helped forge peace in Northern Ireland by breaking the taboo of politicians talking to paramilitaries

Reid would eventually witness the IRA putting its weapons beyond use

The Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams once said: “We would not have even the possibility of a peace process if it wasn’t for the unstinting, patient, diligent work of a third party. He was the key to it and he brought a very special quality to it.” The figure he was speaking of, but did not name, was Father Alec Reid. When he spoke the Redemptorist priest was very much in the shadows of the peace process, but Reid’s death brought a flood of tributes from the British and Irish governments, from republicans, nationalists and unionists, and both Catholic and Protestant churchmen.

He helped start and to nurture a peace process which eventually ended the Troubles after decades of violence. A particular tribute to the Falls Road priest came from the Ministry of Defence in recognition of his action in tending to two soldiers who were cold-bloodedly killed by the IRA. An MoD spokesman said: “Fr Reid’s intervention to administer last rites epitomised his enormous faith and strength of conviction. His comfort was given amidst the enormous fears and tension on that terrible day.”

Photographs of him attempting to revive the soldiers, who had been beaten and shot in west Belfast, presented a tableau of both brutality and humanity. In his pocket as he bent over the soldiers was an important message from Sinn Fein to another nationalist party, which in the incident was splashed with blood from one of the murdered soldiers. Reid went back to his monastery, changed the envelope and drove more than 60 miles to deliver the message. The image of the blood-stained priest was all that was publicly known about him at the time.

It only emerged years later that he was devoting himself to promoting dialogue between opposing elements. Most of these did not previously speak to each other, and some in fact were actively trying to kill each other.

While the deaths of the soldiers and others generated near-despair, they did not derail his efforts to develop a culture of clandestine contacts even as violence raged. His approach was described by Rev Ken Newell, a senior Presbyterian clergyman who developed a close relationship with him: “I have always seen him as an electrician. He took two wires where there was no current going across them, and he wrapped himself around them like tape and held them together until the current of communication began to flow.” The bridges he built with the Protestant community – which included many meetings with violent loyalist paramilitaries – were so sturdy that his funeral this week will take the form of an ecumenical service.

The Redemptorist priest from Tipperary spent almost half a century in Clonard monastery in west Belfast, an area which saw hundreds of deaths. Pale, thin and stooped, he was described as “slightly built, almost wraith-like.” This helped earn him the nickname of “the Holy Ghost”. He is remembered for his habit of remarking, when confronted with apparently insurmountable obstacles, “We’ll have to rely on the Holy Spirit to take care of this.”

He was austere even in his dietary habits. “Poor Fr Reid, he’d never eat,” Kathleen Reynolds, wife of the former Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds, remembered. “I used to give him a cup of tea – all he ever took was a cup of tea.”

The Falls Road was the scene of many deaths, including those of soldiers, republicans and civilians. The priest came to know Gerry Adams when he was called in to mediate in lethal feuds between republican factions in the 1970s.

After witnessing so many deaths, he pondered on how the cycle of violence might be broken. An essential key, he concluded, was that the taboo against politicians talking to Adams and Sinn Fein should be broken. And his own Catholic church, he contended, “must enter into direct communication and dialogue with the republican movement if she wants to persuade it to abandon the gun and to follow the ways of peaceful politics.”

A fellow priest said of Reid: “He came to see me in a mood of great anxiety. His motive was, bluntly, to stop the killing. He asked, ‘How do you get the republicans to stop the war – what would tip the balance to get the IRA to stop?’”

There were few takers for his proposal to hold talks since the IRA was implacably insistent that, while it would discuss peace, it was determined to continue to wage war until a settlement emerged. But he achieved a major breakthrough when he wrote to John Hume, leader of the largest non-violent nationalist party, the SDLP. Hume, later a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, responded positively.

Reid recalled, “I will always be grateful to Mr Hume because he didn’t know me, but he actually phoned the day he received the letter and said he would come down the next day.” One of Hume’s aides recalled that the priest “spoke in gospel terms, spoke of people being treated as lepers, spoke of how Jesus had always been prepared to speak to everybody.”

Reid arranged for Hume to meet Adams secretly, but word leaked out. Hume faced fierce criticism, some saying he was “supping with the devil” and aiding republicans in “contaminating” the political system. He was forced to defend himself. “Politics is the alternative to war, politics is about dialogue,” he insisted. “I’ll talk to anyone about it – that doesn’t mean I approve of what they stand for.”

Although Adams and Sinn Fein remained politically radioactive, others quietly took part in discreet dialogue, including senior Dublin figures and Protestant clergy. Eventually London, too, under pressure from the Irish government, joined in. The end result, which came about after years of arduous negotiation and many crises, was the disbanding of the IRA and, in time, the formation of a Belfast administration which includes Sinn Fein. Along the way Reid played a practical role when he acted as one of the observers who personally witnessed the IRA putting its weaponry beyond use.

He would have been wryly aware that some of those now paying tribute to him disapproved of his controversial approach, never believing it could work. Among the tributes was one from John Hume, who said, “He was a pillar of the peace process. Without his courage, determination and utter selflessness the road to peace would have been much longer and much more difficult.”

Alec Patrick Reid, priest: born Nenagh, County Tipperary 5 August 1931; died 22 November 2013.