Bishop suggests “slightly more sinister forces” behind “angry bonfires” in Derry

“I don’t think that we should put the bonfire up and put names and flags and posters and so on to burn and cheer and dance around”

The Catholic Bishop of Derry has said “angry bonfires” in the city serve no purpose and don’t have “anything to do with religion”.

Controversial ‘nationalist bonfires’ built in the Bogside and Creggan areas of the city are due to be set alight on Friday, August 15 – a date that marks the Catholic Feast of the Assumption and coincides with the anniversary of the introduction of internment in 1971.

Bishop of Derry Dr Donal McKeown suggested there are “older, slightly more sinister forces” involved in the bonfires.

READ MORE: Family’s hurt as name of tragic Protestant boy placed on Creggan bonfireREAD MORE: Sinn Féin calls for statutory agencies to “step up” over Derry bonfires

There was widespread condemnation this week when a placard bearing the name of a young Protestant boy, Kyle Bonnes who sadly died after drowning in the River Faughan in 2010, was placed on the bonfire in Creggan.

The placard also bore the name of a senior PSNI detective, John Caldwell, who survived after being shot multiple times while he was off duty after coaching a youth football team in Omagh, Co Tyrone in 2023. Another placard on the bonfire featured the name of Sinn Fein MLA Padraig Delargy, who spoken out several times in recent weeks against the bonfires.

The placards have since been removed.

Bishop McKeown said an “angry bonfire” is “not any good way to help our young people”.

Speaking to BBC Radio Foyle on Friday morning, just hours before the lighting of the bonfires, the Catholic clergyman said: “I’m convinced that having an angry bonfire, which will encourage anger and perhaps some risk of violence, is not any good way to help our young people to deal with the reality of the unsatisfactory situation that they find themselves in.

“Nothing beautiful grows in an angry head. So those who help our young people to be angry, I don’t think they’re doing them any favours. As well as that, there’s always a risk of some people getting involved in law-breaking and ending up blighting the rest of their lives.”

He continued, “I think anybody who encourages anger is not doing us a favour. We don’t need an angry society. People are angry about all sorts of things, whether it’s finances here, whether it’s job opportunities, whether it’s housing, whether it’s the war in Gaza, where people are understandably angry.

“It’s a question of how do we channel that anger in some sort of constructive way. There’s always a risk that older, slightly more sinister forces will use young people and say this is the way to go forward. You name people who you hate burn them on the bonfire. There’s no future can be built on the ashes of anger.”

Asked about the burning of flags and emblems, the Bishop said: “I think it’s all very disrespectful of people because it’s meant to antagonize. It’s meant to say ‘we hate you’, meant to say that ‘you are bad people and we detest what you stand for’. And we see what happens whenever you lump a particular group of people into a category to be hated.

“We see it in Gaza, we see it in the Middle East, we see it in Ukraine and Russia. Lumping people as if they were not human beings but rather members of a flock of some sort that you could antagonise and demonise.

“We have to build a future that includes all of us here, even those who we don’t agree with, and I think the churches have tried to bear witness, working together to say it’s possible to have a difference in the future where we respect difference, where we’re not frightened by it, and those who exploit fear of the other actually are doing us no favor.”

And on the association of the bonfires with the Feast of the Assumption, which celebrates the assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven, Bishop McKeown said: “Everything has roots somewhere or another. I don’t think it’s anything to do with the religious festival that we celebrate this morning. That’s not what the bonfires are about. They may have had some connection with that in the past. I don’t think that we should put the bonfire up and put names and flags and posters and so on to burn and cheer and dance around. I don’t think that’s anything to do with religion.”

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