Scottish Catholic Observer

Bishop Brendan Leahy, visiting Scotland to address a conference of New Movements on November 5, told the SCO it would be a ‘really, really sad day if we suddenly find there is a border,’ between the north and south of Ireland.

“The peace process has definitely been the miracle of our times,” he said. “However, there is a risk we take it for granted. The troubles, as we call it, for 30 years did a lot of damage. There is a big challenge for us as churches and as political society as to how we engage in the healing of memory, on both sides.

“How do we read our story to each other and with each other in a way that can heal? That is not easy. There are still wounds. And Brexit is going to cause further complications because it could well mean that we are going to have a border up again.”

The bishop said he can remember the seriousness of the former border between the north and south. “It’d be an enormous complex of buildings and you’d have the army with dogs and guns,” he said.

“People keep talking about a hard border, a soft border. We’ve moved into uncertainty and that is part of the problem,” he said.

In Ireland, the Bishop added, there is a lot of concern about Brexit.

“It clearly is going to have a big impact, and at the end of the day Britain is our biggest neighbour so we interact a lot—our trade is massively linked and so many of our initiatives are linked. Geographically, we are an island further out than Britain, so even psychologically for Europe we are sort of out there with England in Brexit territory. There is a concern this will have a big impact on us.”