Bishop Noel Treanor and the Belfast Brigade of the IRA

Bishop Noel Treanor will probably be best remembered for spending well over £1M on lavish upgrades to his Belfast residence, ‘Lisbreen‘, on Somerton Road, over a third of the cost picked up by a generous Stormont grant in 2014.

Bishop Treanor may also be remembered for his poor relationship with the head of the Catholic church’s own Child Protection Agency, Ian Elliott, to whom the Bishop had to publicly apologise back in 2012.

 

The Catholic Church has been accused of attempting to muzzle its child protection officer after it emerged that he was the subject of a complaint by a senior bishop.

Bishop of Down and Connor Noel Tranor confirmed yesterday that he had apologised to Ian Elliott, chief excutive of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church, over what he termed a “procedural matter”.

One in Four director, Maeve Lewis, said it was “incredibly insulting” of Bishop Treanor to challenge Mr Elliott’s integrity given the latter’s track record and the balanced reports he had produced into child protection practices in Catholic dioceses. The church was attempting to “muzzle” Mr Elliott, she said.

The Sunday Times reported yesterday that the apology was made for accusing Mr Elliott of indulging in spin against the hierarchy during off-the-record briefings with journalists.

Two years later, the Bishop’s spat with Ian Elliott continued when Elliott threatened to sue Treanor over a diocesan child protection report which Elliott claimed omitted a serious case of clerical child abuse.

The former head of a child protection watchdog may sue a Catholic bishop over a report that praised safeguarding practices within the bishop’s diocese.

Ian Elliott, who retired from the National Board of Safeguarding Children (NBSC) last July, is considering legal action against Bishop Noel Treanor.

The bishop leads the Diocese of Down and Connor in Northern Ireland.

Mr Elliott disagrees with the December 2021 report and claims it omitted a serious clerical child abuse case.

Things were very bad in the Down and Connor diocese when the Catholic Church’s own appointed National Child Protection Officer accused its bishop – Treanor – of ‘omitting a serious clerical child abuse case’ from a report.

There would have been many Catholic priests and bishops who would have privately relished Bishop Treanor’s attempts to clip the wings of the Catholic church’s own National Board of Safeguarding Children – by what right did such bodies seek to inquire too deeply into the church’s inner workings?

Following Bishop Treanor’s absolute refusal to give precise costings for his home’s lavish upgrades and his apparent dislike of aspects of Ian Elliott’s activities investigating child abuse in the Catholic church, it came as a surprise that Bishop Treanor suddenly outed himself as an investigator of his own secret diocesan archives attempting to find information about British Army activities during the period of what came to be called “the Ballymurphy massacre”.

Apparently there was very little in the archives, but the brave Bishop nevertheless pulled out a few documents to present to relatives of the 11 Ballymurphy shooting victims, ably assisted by that IRA mastermind of 1,700 murders, Gerry Adams.

An initial search of the diocese’s normally secret archives yielded nothing of relevance, but a second widened search brought forth a few references which the good Bishop held aloft triumphantly and handed over.

If these normally secretive archives could be searched for evidence to be used in the prosecution of 11 potential British Army murders, how much more evidence might they yield of 1,700 IRA murders?

It is no secret that priests in the diocese of Down and Connor were constantly hearing and communicating information about members of the IRA – Irish government state files released in December 2017 showed that Catholic priests were not averse to meeting representatives of the government of the Irish Republic who were “gathering intelligence” in Belfast.

A former parish priest of Ballymurphy, Fr. Peter Forde, gave a number of briefings to Irish government official David Donoghue.

Unlike members of fairly independent religious orders, diocesan priests reported to their Bishops.

If Fr. Peter Forde was so open with an Irish government official gathering intelligence, how much more must he and his fellows have reported information to their Bishops over the years.

It is interesting that diocesan priest Fr. Forde pointedly mentioned Clonard Monastery as full of “wide-eyed Southern Redemptorists… less likely to ask the Provos [Gerry Adams] searching questions”.

Of course, the Belfast Brigade of the IRA was given a secret operational headquarters by the Clonard Redemptorist priests in 1971/1972 – and this fact and many thousands of other pieces of information must have made their way into the diocesan archives via reports from scores of diocesan priests with their ears to the ground.

If Bishop Treanor was moved to scour the archives to try to help bring justice to the relatives of 11 victims of the British Army, why was he not moved to scour the same archives to try to bring justice to 1,700 victims of the IRA?

The IRA murdered 154 times as many victims as were murdered in Ballymurphy – was the good Bishop not moved to search out information leading to justice for the 1,700 victims of the IRA?

There was no danger whatsoever that Bishop Noel Treanor was ever going to scour the Down and Connor Diocesan Archives for information about IRA murders of both Catholics and Protestants – and there was equally no likelihood that Treanor was ever going to mount an inquiry into Clonard Monastery’s collusion with the IRA in the 1970s when it granted a secret operational Headquarters to the Belfast Brigade of the IRA during the period of its worst mass-casualty bombings and mass murders of both Catholics and Protestants.

In fact, Treanor was happier posing for selfies with Ireland’s acknowleged most prolific mass murderers – with IRA leaders who never repented any of their mass murders and maimings.

“Sinn Féin-speak”

Note that Bishop Treanor ended his “Anderstonstown News” report with the “Sinn Féin-speak” of carefully avoiding any Catholic reference to the IRA’s murders and bombings as ‘sins’ or as actions requiring anything as objectionable as the Catholic church’s notions of ‘repentance’ or ‘confession’ – no, the good Bishop uttered his final words referencing only an alleged magical cure-all of a repentance-free and confession-free

“mechanism of investigation into these and other events of the Troubles sufficiently efficient, robust and independent to contribute to a meaningful healing of memory and to a vindication of the truth for individuals”

‘Events of the Troubles‘?

They were MURDERS and BOMBINGS!

No, the good Bishop Noel Treanor was not going to inquire into any IRA murders or bombings – nor was he going to make enquiries into any Catholic church collusion with the IRA.

Bishop Noel Treanor couldn’t even stomach the Catholic church’s own enquiring National Board for Safeguarding Children or its Chief Executive, Ian Elliott…

What a sell-out of the Gospels and their call to individual repentance!

For an article about the Catholic church’s new cosy relationship with the IRA, see here.

For an article about Catholic priests who joined or supported the IRA, see here.