Last Saturday being the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima, dread thoughts of my worst day in journalism flooded back.
Regular readers will know that it was on May 13th 1917 that Our Lady of Fatima made her debut appearance to three pious Portuguese urchins, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco; that it was on May 13th 1970 that the Beatles film ‘Let It Be’ was released; and that it was on May 13th 1981 that Mehmet Ali Agca shot and wounded Pope John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square.
John Paul believed that his life had been saved by divine intervention prompted by the intercession of Our Lady of Fatima.
The dread moment in journalism which I refer to occurred one morning about 10 days before the attempted assassination of the pontiff.
I was sitting at my news editor’s desk at the Sunday World when word came from reception that there was a fellow wanted to talk to a reporter. As a high-flying journalistic executive, this wasn’t the sort of mundane chore I cared to undertake personally. I glanced around the newsroom for a candidate. There was Judith Elmes, giving some pedantic nit-picker with a silly complaint about being misquoted a bit of her mind in tones which brooked no interruption. Cathal O’Shea was up to his eyes trying to coax the estranged wife of a Fianna Fail TD to agree that her husband had behaved like a ‘monster’ so we could run a picture of him on the front-page with a splash headline – ‘I married a monster, says TD’s wife.’ (We did it, too.) Sam Smyth was working flat out on his major project of the period, a five-part ‘Where are they now?’ series on Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich. And, since it was before noon, John Keane wasn’t in yet. Wearily, I agreed to have a word with the fellow myself.
His story was that if the pope didn’t reveal the Third Secret of Fatima pronto, he’d do something drastic. What, he wouldn’t say.  
Where I came from, we not only knew about the Third Secret of Fatima – passed to the three visionaries by the BVM and subsequently consigned to the care of the Vatican – we knew what it was (the date of the end of the world) and why successive popes had refused to divulge its content (fear of spreading panic across the earth.) So I had the measure of this chap immediately. ‘Man demands pope reveal Fatima secret,’ didn’t set my journalistic blood racing. I told him sorry, I couldn’t help. ‘Alright, so,’ he replied, agreeably enough. ‘I’ll just try somewhere else.’
‘Sure you don’t want me to snatch a pic, just in case?’ wondered ace snapsman Aiden O’Keeffe, loitering in the vicinity as the Fatima obsessive wandered away Naw, I assured him. No point.
Just before noon the following Saturday, word came from Dublin airport that a man claiming to be in possession of a grenade and a flagon of petrol had hi-jacked an Aer Lingus plane and ordered the pilot to proceed to Paris. By mid-afternoon, the plane was on the ground at Orly and the hi-jacker’s demands had been made public: he’d incinerate himself and all on board if the pope didn’t divulge the Third Secret of Fatima. This was suddenly the biggest Sunday story in Europe. Silence descended on the World newsroom in Terenure, broken only by the irresponsible sniggering of O’Keeffe.
There was worse. After I’d given him the bum’s rush, the fellow – a former Trappist monk called Downey, it turned out – had indeed tried somewhere else, one of our Sunday rivals, as became sickeningly evident when the early editions arrived with a ginormous colour portrait on page one and an extended interview carried over into a double-page spread in which, as I recall, he explained how he’d become interested in the Secret during a childhood illness, how this interest had developed into an obsession, why he believed the Vatican was being so adamant in its refusal to share the Secret with the people and how he’d been left with no option but to do something spectacular to force the pope’s hand.
The hi-jacking was over by morning and no damage done. But every Sunday across Europe had meantime led with the story. And the news editor of the rival publication had spent the intervening hours picking and choosing between the pleas for interviews with which his office had been deluged from all corners of the globe.  
‘Bad miss, that,’ murmured editor Kevin Marron when we reassembled the following Tuesday. Aye, I agreed, and allowed that my career might never recover.
‘Don’t worry,’ he counselled kindly, ‘Everybody will have forgotten all about it in a week.’
Within a week, Mr. Agca had plugged the pope at St. Peter’s and the story of Our Lady of Fatima and her Secret was right back in the headlines.
Last time I saw snapsman O’Keefe, he asked, sotto voce, ‘Mind if I mention something confidential.’ Of course, I agreed
‘The Third Secret of Fatima!’ came the reply which I should surely have anticipated. And he scarpered, leaving a concerto of cackles in his wake.
My career’s never recovered. I mean, I’m writing this.
I mentioned last issue the piquant irony involved in Sinn Fein holding public meetings in the Morris Tribunal county of Donegal calling on the gardai to take tougher action against citizens suspected of crime.
But there’s more.
At one of the Shinner rallies, in Lifford, speakers had raged against ‘a small minority...known to the gardai’ who were strutting around, cocking a snoot at law’n’order. Officers ‘should be waiting outside the homes of these people and pulling them up wherever they go,’ the meeting was told.
The was somewhat reminiscent, I suggested, of a Sinn Fein campaign in Donegal in 1992 demanding no-nonsense action against drug-dealers allegedly congregating in the Point Inn at Quigley’s Point. The Provies threatened violent action if the cops didn’t crack down on the alleged criminals.
It was following this campaign that gardai mounted a mass assault on the Point, battered dozens of revellers and planted drugs on owner Frank Shortt. Frank has since been compensated for the three years he spent wrongfully in prison. A number of officers involved in the raid have been exposed for corruption by Morris.
Thus the cynicism of my response to the latest Sinn Fein attempt to win votes by whipping up law’n’order hysteria.
Now, I see from the Donegal Democrat that a Sinn Fein spokesman has denounced local gardai as ‘vindictive’ after a police raid on the homes of two party members.
‘The record of the Garda Siochana in Donegal leaves a lot to be desired,’ the party spokesman declared. ‘It is clear that there are those within the Irish security service who are determined to hold on to the old agenda of harassing Republicans. There was no reason whatsoever for these raids.’
The party said it was ‘particularly concerned, given the history of the Gardai in Donegal where the force has been rocked by several high-profile corruption scandals.’
I’ve never been backward about coming forward to speak out against police harassment. But, hey....
The Shinners. What are they like?