Paisley and the Pope
Ian Paisley is due to become a peer next week, but before donning the ermine he's taken a crack at an old foe who is also fond of long flowing robes. He has told the ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service's "The Interview" programme, to be broadcast this weekend, that the visit to the UK by Pope Benedict XVI due in September was a mistake. The former First Minister says "I think he (the Pope) should not be invited to the country....I don't know how it has been done because they have had it all secret. Nobody knows who made the thing. You go and ask a question of any minister and he says he doesn't want to have anything to do with it. The Queen is only meeting them on Scottish soil, not on English soil....I think it's a mistake."
He also doesn't see any reason to retract his historic quotes about Catholics, like the time in 1969 when he is quoted as telling a loyalist rally that "they breed like rabbits and multiply like vermin".
He brushes aside the prospect of Martin McGuinness becoming First Minister, insisting that unionists will never let that happen.
On one level this is not very surprising anyone who has kept an eye on Ian Paisley's "News Letter" columns knows he hasn't changed his theological views. However the recent reassessment of the former DUP leader, since he decided to share power with Sinn Fein, has tended to diminish some people's memories of how fervent his attitudes were when, for example, he protested against the Pope in the European parliament back in 1988.
Of course some - like the Orange Order which has previously called for protests against the Pope's visit - may applaud Ian Paisleys forthright comments. For others it may be a reminder that his contribution has to be judged in the round, not just on his chuckling epilogue.
Indeed when the "Chuckle Brothers" were in residence at Stormont Castle they had an unspoken rule - Martin didn't have to do the Queen, so long as Ian didn't have to do the Pope. Which is a shame, because I'd rather like to be a fly on the wall, during an Ian Paisley/Pope Benedict XVI encounter in September (to which Ian Paisley might reply, as I think he did once to Noel Thompson "if you were a fly on the wall, I'd swat you".)
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