Church site of stand-off between IRA & the clergy
THE funeral Mass of Martin Mcguinness will take place today at a church which witnessed a famous stand-off between a highprofile bishop and the IRA. St Columba’s Church in the parish of Long Tower in the Bishop Street area of Derry saw a row sparked on March 24, 1987, when two masked gunmen fired a volley of shots inside the grounds during the funeral Gerard Logue. Two days earlier Mr Logue, 26, was shot when a weapon he was carrying accidentally discharged. He was found fatally wounded in an alleyway at the rear of houses in the Gobnascale area of the Waterside, close to his home at Rose Court.
ARMED
During a funeral procession from his home, the then RUC deployed hundreds of armed officers along the route of the procession. When the coffin arrived at the church for Requiem Mass, the officers took up positions immediately outside in a bid to ensure a volley of shots would not be fired over the tricoloured-draped coffin. However, when it was carried into the grounds, two masked gunmen emerged from the crowd of hundreds of mourners and fired a volley of pistol shots over the casket. Among those standing close by was Martin Mcguinness. The crowd applauded the incident and the two gunmen mingled with those gathered and avoided capture. The then Bishop of Derry, Bishop Edward Daly, convened a meeting of his closest cleric and lay advisers the following day. Soon after he issued a statement in which he stated he was imposing a ban on any paramilitary trappings such as black gloves and berets being brought into church grounds in the Derry diocese during republican paramilitary funerals. Following pressure from family members of the IRA men who died after the ban, the IRA relented by agreeing to remove the paraphernalia prior to the coffins being brought into church grounds.