Claudy, U.K.

Killer priest: The British government conspired with the Catholic Church to cover up the involvement of a Catholic priest in a deadly IRA bombing in 1972, a report by the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland confirmed this week. The report says police at the time believed that the Rev. James Chesney was an IRA official in Northern Ireland and had direct involvement in the bombing of the village of Claudy, which killed nine people, including three children. But then–Northern Ireland Secretary Willie Whitelaw and Cardinal William Conway, then head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, had the priest transferred to the Republic of Ireland before he could be questioned. “That the report finds that a man of God helped to plan the atrocity only compounds the horror of the deed and deepens the grief of the village,” said Hugh Logue, a former Claudy lawmaker.

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