NEWS & VIEWS
from a CATHOLIC perspective

      BELFAST (CWNews.com) - The Northern Ireland Parades Commission on Monday decided to ban a planned march by the Protestant Orange Order through a Portadown neighborhood, the site of previous conflicts between Protestants and Catholics.

      About 10,000 Orange Order members had planned to march down Garvaghy Road -- a Catholic neighborhood -- on Saturday, the same spot where British authorities stopped the group's annual march in July. The commission said the parade could not process through "that highly contentious area, because no accommodation has been reached with local people." They also noted that since the Orange Order hoped to gather as many as four times as many marchers as before and "showed little capacity to discipline the participants and their supporters, we must conclude that there is a very real prospect of major disorder."

      During the confrontation in July, the marchers gathered at the start of the parade route, around the clock, for a week, but relented after rioting resulted in the deaths of three young Catholic boys. The Orange Order is opposed to the Good Friday peace accords reached last year between the largest Protestant and Catholic parties in the region.