During an interview on CNN, Cardinal Timothy Dolan said: "The IRA claimed to be Catholic. They were baptised. They had a Catholic identity."

But, he continued, "what they were doing was a perversion of everything the Church stood for".

The cardinal said the Islamic State movement was in the midst of a "systematic, well-choreographed, very well-focussed attempt to eradicate the ancient Christian population of the Mid-East".

"You know the parallel I've drawn?" he added.

He went on to add that the Irish bishops "to their immense credit", said at the time that the IRA attackers who targeted homes or military installations were not Catholics.

Cardinal Dolan said that while the killers of Islamic State are Muslim in his eyes, they belong to a "particularly perverted form of Islam".

"These are not pure, these are not real Muslims," he explained.

"Now what we need and what Pope Francis has led the world in saying, is we need the temperate, moderate, genuine forces of Islam to rise up and say this: they do not represent us.

"Now, that's beginning to happen. God can bring good out of evil."

Cardinal Dolan was expanding on comments he had made in New York media last month, when he had made a similar analogy.

The Ulster Unionist Party's Tom Elliott told the Belfast Newsletter he questioned just how far the Catholic Church really had gone in denouncing IRA violence.

Asked whether he believed Cardinal Dolan's reference to the Catholic Church's anti-IRA stance rings true, he said: "On some occasions it does.

"However, I never knew the Catholic Church to not bury a [Provisional IRA] person and some of them allowed, obviously, those terrorist or paramilitary funerals at their church.

"So while they did go some way, they had options to go much further."

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• Belfast Newsletter
• The Journal
• Image: BBC

Irish political party Sinn Fein has been accused of covering up for IRA sex abusers by moving them from Northern Ireland to the Irish republic.

Ireland's Parliament recently debated the claims of Belfast woman Mairia Cahill, who was raped by an alleged IRA member when she was 16.

Ms Cahill was subsequently forced to come face-to-face with her rapist in a harrowing kangaroo court scenario.

MP Joan Burton challenged Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald to apply the same standards as she did when condemning the Catholic Church's cover-up of sex abuse.

"In particular, does she apply this standard to the ‘powerful man' who leads her own party?" asked Ms Burton.

Another MP Regina Doherty said she had the names of eight alleged abusers relocated to the republic by Sinn Féin.

She said she would forward these to the police.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said there were as many as 28 victims of abuse by members of the Provisional IRA.

"This abuse was covered up within the movement and continues to be covered up to this day," said Mr Martin.

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams said he accepted Ms Cahill had been abused.

Mr Adams conceded the IRA response was inadequate, and said the organisation shot and expelled abusers.

But beyond that he said he knew nothing of the details.

He asserted that a case of alleged IRA cover-up had morphed to a claim where Sinn Féin facilitated sex abuse.

"I reject the charge," he said.

Mr Adams accused the other party leaders of playing politics and using smear tactics because they feared the growing strength of Sinn Féin.

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny said the IRA had "covered up abuse, moved the perpetrators around so the untouchables would remain untouchable" outside Northern Ireland.

Another MP told Mr Adams she would "not believe the Lord's Prayer from his mouth".

Sources

• Irish Times
• Irish Times
• Irish Independent
• Belfast Telegraph
• Image: Irish Independent

A 30 year old man was arrested by police in connection with the discovery.

Several families were evacuated overnight until the all-clear was given. Residents denounced those responsible for storing bombs in a densely populated civilian area.

"Whoever left it there, would they have left it beside their own children?" said Paddy McDaid, who feared that his 9-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter could have been wounded or killed by any premature explosion. The bombs were found four doors away from his own, with the building's main gas pipe running in between.

Gerry Murray, a 78-year-old disabled retiree who was evacuated with his wife, said the various IRA splinter gangs deserved no support from the Irish nationalist majority in the city.

"I'm angry and I think a lot of other people will be angry too," he said.

The city's police commander, Chief Inspector Garry Eaton, said their choice of location to store bombs demonstrated "a callous and outrageous disregard for the safety of the community. We're lucky this morning that we're not dealing with serious injuries or deaths."

Sinn Fein, the political party that grew out of the Provisional IRA and today represents most of Northern Ireland's Irish nationalists in a coalition government with the British Protestant majority, denounced the Londonderry bombers as unhinged from reality.

"It's absolutely ridiculous that in this day and age people have to put up with the stress and upset this has caused," said Mickey Cooper, a Londonderry city councilman for Sinn Fein, after he visited the evacuees at the gym. "There is no justification for these activities in the political climate in which we now live."

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