NIreland Church calls for dialogue in diversity in wake of riots

Leaders from Northern Ireland’s Catholic and Protestant Churches have appealed to their communities for calm after rioting in Belfast between Nationalists and Loyalists.

The riots came as thousands of pro-British Loyalists, who are mostly Protestant, held their annual 12^th of July Orange Order parades throughout the province.
The period leading up to the Orange march has been one of the most violent between loyalists and mostly Catholic nationalists since the signing of the Good Friday Peace Agreement in 1998.
Emer McCarthy spoke to Bishop Donal Mckeown, auxiliary bishop of the diocese of Down and Connor who says that “tension can be lived with, but there are those who are happy to exploit that tension for their own political purposes”. Listen: