Father Michael Hurley (died 15 April 2011)

The death has taken place in Dublin of the prominent champion of harmony among Christians, Father Michael Hurley.

A co-founder of the Irish School of Ecumenics, he was 87 years old.

In 1981, during the inter-communal violence that accompanied the republican hunger strikes, Fr Hurley conceived the idea of an ecumenical community of Catholics and Protestants living together in Northern Ireland.

In 1983 he co-founded the Columbanus Community of Reconciliation in the Antrim Road in north Belfast. He lived and worked there for ten years.

He has written extensively on the subject of ecumenism.

A native of Ardmore in Co Waterford, he was educated in University College Dublin and Egenhoven-Louvain, before completing his doctorate in theology in the Gregorian University in Rome.

He received an honorary doctorate from Queen's University Belfast in 1993, and from Trinity College Dublin in 1995.

In recent years he lived with the Jesuit community in Milltown Park in south Dublin.

 

 

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