Queen Elizabeth's Northern Ireland visit: An ecumenical milestone

(Vatican Radio) The visit of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth this week to Northern Ireland to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee was billed as historic, it also marked a series of firsts. The first pre-announced visit to Northern Ireland, the first handshake between former IRA Commander, now Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness and the first visit by the Queen to a Catholic Church in Northern Ireland.

Much was made of “that” handshake but the British monarch’s visit to St Macartins Church of Ireland Cathedral for a service of thanksgiving and St Michael’s Catholic Church marked in itself a milestone in ecumenical and cross community relations.

Both churches are located in the town Enniskillen in Co Fermanagh, the scene of an horrific bomb attack in 1987.

For two churchmen who took centre stage at this ecumenical thanksgiving service, it was a day to remember.

“This idea of two communities needs to disappear, we are one community together, we’re all Christian people serving the Lord together and there shouldn’t be division in us.”

Kenny Hall is Dean of St Macartin’s Cathedral, he says the service highlighted the level of solidarity among the Christian people in Northern Ireland.

“Because this visit is an ecumenically styled visit, it’s all the more important for Northern Ireland and in the involvement in the service we had not only the Church of Ireland Bishops but also the Roman Catholic Bishops, the moderator of the Presbyterian Church and the President of the Methodist Church, there was quite an ecumenical occasion to have them all take part in the service and it shows a sign of the solidarity among the Christian people in this part of the world.”

After the thanksgiving service the Queen walked across from St Macartins' to St Michaels church where she was greeted by Parish Priest, Canon Peter O’Reilly.

“This visit has been marked by two handshakes, the one that has been talked about a lot is the handshake between Martin McGuinness and Her Majesty the Queen, but the other handshake was my own with Her Majesty and truthfully I think that one marked an end but the other marked a new beginning and in that sense I feel that my own, that Her Majesty’s handshake with myself was of greater significance because it marks a new beginning of confidence in the community that already exists here.”

Canon O’Reilly says the Queen’s visit offers hope for the future.

"She (the Queen) in what she did enabled us to powerfully feel that we were one people under God and one people together.”

Queen Elizabeth may now have left Northern Ireland’s shores, but her two stay is being seen as a visit that has left an indelible mark on the continuing inroads to peace and reconciliation. Listen to Lydia O’Kane’s report