Berlin - Bishop Edward Daly, the priest who was filmed waving a bloodied white handkerchief as he tried to assist a dying teenager shot in Derry, Northern Ireland, on Bloody Sunday in 1972, has died aged 82, the Catholic Church announced Monday.
The footage of Daly trying to save lethally wounded 17-year-old Jackie Duddy became the defining image of the day British paratroopers fired live rounds on a civil rights march, killing 13 unarmed civilians.
The British government did not apologise until 2010 for the incident, which fuelled anti-British sentiment and Irish nationalism in the mostly Catholic city. The conflict in British-administered Northern Ireland, known locally as The Troubles, lasted until 1998.
Born in 1933 in the border village of Belleek, County Fermanagh, Daly was ordained a priest in 1957, the Diocese of Derry said on its website. On Bloody Sunday, he was working as a curate in Derry's St Eugene's Cathedral. In 1973, he was appointed bishop of Derry, but illness forced him to retire in 1994.
Known for reaching out to the Protestant community and working for peace in Ireland, he also campaigned for those who suffered miscarriages of justice.
“Bishop Daly served, without any concern for himself, throughout the traumatic years of The Troubles, finding his ministry shaped by the experience of witnessing violence and its effects,” the current bishop of Derry, Donal McKeown, said in a statement.
“The bishops, priests and people of the diocese were blessed to have such a dedicated and faithful priest among them.”
DPA