NEWS & VIEWS
from a CATHOLIC perspective

      BELFAST (CWNews.com) - Northern Ireland was rocked by a night of firebombing and attacks on police by Protestant youth gangs after British authorities blocked a Sunday parade through a Catholic neighborhood by the Protestant Orange Order.

      Several hundred Protestants remained camped outside the Drumcree Anglican church near Portadown after police used barbed wire to block the marchers from Garvaghy Road. The parade is an annual event which marks a 300-year-old victory by Protestants over a Catholic king. The march has been marked by riots over the past three years after police blocked the march and then relented to end violence.

      "I sincerely hope that everybody in Northern Ireland will see that the Parades Commission is anxious to take a balanced approach," said Alastair Graham, the chairman of the government commission set up last year to regulate the controversial parades, after allowing the Orange Order to march on July 13 through a Catholic neighborhood in the Lower Ormeau section of Belfast. The summer parades are seen as the first major test of the recently ratified Good Friday peace accords signed by the warring factions earlier this year.