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Denis Faul
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Denis Faul
Denis O'Beirne Faul (14 August 1932 – 21 June 2006) was an Irish Roman Catholic priest best known, in the course of the Northern Ireland Troubles, for publicising security-force abuses and, controversially among Irish republicans, for his role, with the families of prisoners, in bringing to an end the 1981 Irish hunger strike. In 1995, his church awarded him the honorific title of Monsignor.
Born on 14 August 1932 in the village of Louth, County Louth, he was the son of Joseph and Anne Frances Faul. He was educated at St. Patrick's Grammar School, Armagh, and thereafter studied for the priesthood at St Patrick's College, Maynooth (where he recalled not being allowed to ask questions: "everything was very straightforward"). He was ordained in 1956. After a year studying theology in Rome, he joined the staff of St Patrick's Academy, Dungannon, County Tyrone, to teach Latin and religion. He was appointed principal in 1983.
As a schoolteacher of young Catholics ill-treated by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), Faul became involved in the early Northern Ireland civil rights movement, and in 1968 participated in its marches. With onset of the Troubles, he protested vigorously against rights violations by the RUC and, after they were deployed in August 1969 on the streets, by the British Army. He was also to protest the impunity seemingly enjoyed by loyalist-paramilitary death squads. For his criticism of the security forces and of the judiciary, Faul was publicly rebuked by Cardinal William Conway concerned lest the church be seen as aligned with republicans.
From the introduction of internment without trial (Operation Demetrius) in 1971 to late 1980s, Faul produced in excess of 150 leaflets and pamphlets detailing security force abuses and calling for reform. Most of these were in collaboration with Fr Raymond Murray, prison Chaplain in the women's prison at Armagh. In 1974, in submissions to the Lord Gardiner inquiry into the human-rights context of "counter-terrorism" measures, the two priests documented the use of a wide variety of torture techniques in the interrogation and treatment of IRA suspects. When riots broke out at Long Kesh, Faul and Murray circulated The Flames of Long Kesh (1974) to explain and present the prisoners grievances. This they followed up with The RUC:The Black and Blue Book (1975), an indictment of police abuses and of selective justice.
In Triangle of Death (1975) Faul and Murray highlighted the possibility of security-force collusion in a spate of killings by the loyalist Glenanne gang of Catholics in the countryside between Portadown, Dungannon and Armagh. They repeatedly raised their concerns with the British and Irish governments.
Beginning in 1976, before their causes became well-known, Faul and Murray campaigned for the release of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven. In 1982, they highlighted the lethal use of purportedly crowd-control plastic bullets. Those stung by Faul's accusations viewed him as a "Provo priest".
Faul was not uncritical of his church's response to the Troubles. In failing to "understand the suffering of his own people", he suggested that William Philbin, Bishop of Down and Conor, had conceded leadership to the Provisional Irish Republican Army(described by the bishop as being "of the devil". Among his fellow priests, Faul was not alone: in West Belfast Fr Des Wilson suggested that had the hierarchy "given the same measure of recognition and protection and a sense of dignity to those people as the small guerrilla groups have given them, then they would have as much loyalty". Fr Pat Buckley proposed that had Philbin, in 1969, "led two hundred thousand people up the Falls Road demanding civil rights, the Provos might not have been necessary".
But Faul was not set on the same paths of radical dissent: in what Philbin took as an act of defiance, Wilson resigned his parish duties in 1975, and Buckley's defiance was such that he was suspended from the priesthood in 1986 and excommunicated in 2016. On many of the issues that exercised the Church in the decades following Vatican II, Faul was orthodox and conservative. In contrast to Wilson, he defended the priestly rule of celibacy and Church control of schools ("people accuse us of being in the business of brainwashing children. Well, I make no bones about it – we are"). He also opposed divorce, abortion and contraception.
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Denis Faul
Denis O'Beirne Faul (14 August 1932 – 21 June 2006) was an Irish Roman Catholic priest best known, in the course of the Northern Ireland Troubles, for publicising security-force abuses and, controversially among Irish republicans, for his role, with the families of prisoners, in bringing to an end the 1981 Irish hunger strike. In 1995, his church awarded him the honorific title of Monsignor.
Born on 14 August 1932 in the village of Louth, County Louth, he was the son of Joseph and Anne Frances Faul. He was educated at St. Patrick's Grammar School, Armagh, and thereafter studied for the priesthood at St Patrick's College, Maynooth (where he recalled not being allowed to ask questions: "everything was very straightforward"). He was ordained in 1956. After a year studying theology in Rome, he joined the staff of St Patrick's Academy, Dungannon, County Tyrone, to teach Latin and religion. He was appointed principal in 1983.
As a schoolteacher of young Catholics ill-treated by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), Faul became involved in the early Northern Ireland civil rights movement, and in 1968 participated in its marches. With onset of the Troubles, he protested vigorously against rights violations by the RUC and, after they were deployed in August 1969 on the streets, by the British Army. He was also to protest the impunity seemingly enjoyed by loyalist-paramilitary death squads. For his criticism of the security forces and of the judiciary, Faul was publicly rebuked by Cardinal William Conway concerned lest the church be seen as aligned with republicans.
From the introduction of internment without trial (Operation Demetrius) in 1971 to late 1980s, Faul produced in excess of 150 leaflets and pamphlets detailing security force abuses and calling for reform. Most of these were in collaboration with Fr Raymond Murray, prison Chaplain in the women's prison at Armagh. In 1974, in submissions to the Lord Gardiner inquiry into the human-rights context of "counter-terrorism" measures, the two priests documented the use of a wide variety of torture techniques in the interrogation and treatment of IRA suspects. When riots broke out at Long Kesh, Faul and Murray circulated The Flames of Long Kesh (1974) to explain and present the prisoners grievances. This they followed up with The RUC:The Black and Blue Book (1975), an indictment of police abuses and of selective justice.
In Triangle of Death (1975) Faul and Murray highlighted the possibility of security-force collusion in a spate of killings by the loyalist Glenanne gang of Catholics in the countryside between Portadown, Dungannon and Armagh. They repeatedly raised their concerns with the British and Irish governments.
Beginning in 1976, before their causes became well-known, Faul and Murray campaigned for the release of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven. In 1982, they highlighted the lethal use of purportedly crowd-control plastic bullets. Those stung by Faul's accusations viewed him as a "Provo priest".
Faul was not uncritical of his church's response to the Troubles. In failing to "understand the suffering of his own people", he suggested that William Philbin, Bishop of Down and Conor, had conceded leadership to the Provisional Irish Republican Army(described by the bishop as being "of the devil". Among his fellow priests, Faul was not alone: in West Belfast Fr Des Wilson suggested that had the hierarchy "given the same measure of recognition and protection and a sense of dignity to those people as the small guerrilla groups have given them, then they would have as much loyalty". Fr Pat Buckley proposed that had Philbin, in 1969, "led two hundred thousand people up the Falls Road demanding civil rights, the Provos might not have been necessary".
But Faul was not set on the same paths of radical dissent: in what Philbin took as an act of defiance, Wilson resigned his parish duties in 1975, and Buckley's defiance was such that he was suspended from the priesthood in 1986 and excommunicated in 2016. On many of the issues that exercised the Church in the decades following Vatican II, Faul was orthodox and conservative. In contrast to Wilson, he defended the priestly rule of celibacy and Church control of schools ("people accuse us of being in the business of brainwashing children. Well, I make no bones about it – we are"). He also opposed divorce, abortion and contraception.