FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT IN BELFAST APRIEST was one of the victims of the violence which erupted throughout Northern Ireland this week as the Stormont Government introduced internment without trial in an all-out bid to crush
the IRA.
Fr. Hugh Mullan, aged 40, was shot down during a gun battle in the New Barnsley estate in Belfast as he administered the last rites to a man dying from bullet wounds.
Fr. Mullan, who was attached to St. John's Church, was one of the 14 victims of the vicious gun battles in Belfast on Monday after the announcement that 300 men throughout Northern Ireland had been held under the Special Powers Act.
Italian cardinal dies aged 80
THE Italian Cardinal Callori di Vignale died on Tuesday, the Vatican announced. He was 80. His death reduces the membership in the College of Cardinals to 121. He was the fourth cardinal to die this year.
A priest since 1917, he served in the households of Popes Benedict XII, John XXIII and Paul VI, and was elevated to bishop in 1965. Until his retirement under a papal rule barring 80-year-old cardinals from Church offices, he was a member of the Vatican Congregations for the Clergy, Religious and Secular Institutes. Dr. William Philbin, Bishop of Down and Connor, said of Fr. Mullan, the first priest to live among his people in the trouble-torn Ballymurpby estate: "Ile died as a priest in the service of Christ, ministering to people for whom Christ died."
IIEROIC DEATH' Bishop Philbin warned: "No one must think of his death in relation to anger or hatred or further violence—such a reaction would contradict the meaning of his heroic death in the life and service of others."
The Stormont Government and the security forces have been stunned by the viciousness and anger of the minority about internment -and the anger looks like continuing unabated.
In Belfast alone the initial backlash has taken the form of daylight gun and bomb attacks on British troops, explosions and the erecting of barricades in Catholic areas. Some 300 houses have been burned to the ground—many of them by Protestant families before they fled to "safe" areas, and more than 500 Catholics in the city have crossed the Irish border to live in refugee camps opened by the Dublin Government.
Trouble also spread to provincial towns including Derry, Omagh and Newry, where there were shooting incidents and pitched battles between the Army and mobs.
Stormont Premier, Mr. Brian Faulkner, is trying desperately to win support for his internment policy and the decision to ban all parades for the next six months.
While Protestants and Unionists generally may welcome internment. that welcome has been offset by the ban on parades, including the Apprentice Boys March in Derry, due to be held yesterday.
CAPITULATION Protestant Unionist leader, Rev. Ian Paisley, M.P. has joined (for different reasons) Opposition M.P.s in protesting. Says Mr. Paisley: "Faulkner is using internment as a vehicle whereby he can in some measure offset his complete capitulation to the demands of Mr. Lynch (the Dublin Premier) and his cohorts in Ulster for the banning of the Apprentice Boys of Derry March."
Mr. Paisley says that as a deterrent internment at this stage is useless, and pointed out that key IRA men had escaped the Army and police dragnet. However, one influential crumb of support for the Prime Minister came from the leaders of the three main Protestant Churches in .Northern Ireland.
In a statement they recog nised that because of the "continuing violence and bloodshed for which there can be no Christian justification." the Government in its duty to all citizens had no option but to introduce measures which were distasteful to many people.
Cardinal Conway, the Primate of All Ireland has so far kept silent on the internment issue.
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