‘Let history judge who was to blame’, 1990–1998

Individuals within the Church, rather than the institution as a whole, became the main negotiators for peace after the revelations of clerical child abuse in the early 1990s. Priests like Fathers Alec Reid, Gerry Reynolds, and Denis Faul worked privately to convince paramilitary groups to lay down their weapons. The Church hierarchy was forced into a defensive position in order to protect its reputation as a moral arbiter after the child abuse revelations. The institutional Catholic Church was no longer able to play a role in the peace process by this point. However, individual priests who fostered relationships with their Protestant counterparts continued to act as negotiators for an end to the conflict. The signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement marked one step in the peace process but after this point the Catholic Church had no influence on these policies.