Yesterday the BBC reported that the The Church of Ireland Primate has apologised personally to members of the Consultative Group on the Past over a Church of Ireland Gazette editorial.
Archbishop Harper is quoted as saying, “I have apologised, I personally phoned both Denis Bradley and Lesley Carroll, whom I’ve known for many years, to express my regret.”
Archbishop Alan Harper said he was “genuinely shocked” at the comments.
“Lesley Carroll and Dennis Bradley, children they are not, spoilt children they are definitely not, they are people of considerable integrity, considerable stature in the community, and I regret very much that such an epithet should be thrown at them,” he said.
The Gazette said Denis Bradley and the Reverend Lesley Carroll “came across on the programme rather as spoilt children who had not got their way”. It rejected and criticised comments they made about the CGP report on Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence.
The archbishop said that while the Gazette was “not an organ of the Church of Ireland, it does trade under the name of the Church of Ireland”.
“And so the Church has a right to expect that any comment it expresses should be expressed appropriately and if I may say so, courteously, and that just wasn’t what I saw,” he said.
“I have apologised, I personally phoned both Denis Bradley and Lesley Carroll, whom I’ve known for many years, to express my regret.”
The editor of the gazette, Canon Ian Ellis, has stood by the comments.
“I think it’s fair comment, that is how it came across to me. I think it was appropriate,” he said.
See earlier report this site.