The leader of the Catholic Church in Dublin has called on the city’s people to break the chain of hate and evil which has led to another two gun murders.
Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said a strong alliance was needed to prevent parts of the inner city being abandoned by its good and honest men, women and children.
He urged people to brand those behind the spiralling gangland violence and killings as “despicable” and “evil”.
“Dublin needs a courageous coalition of strong people who are not afraid to call violence what it is: evil,” he said.
“Dublin needs a coalition of strong people who are not afraid to call the sponsors of this violence what they are: despicable and evil.
“Hatred and evil easily become a chain and those who resort to such violence feel that they are the strong ones. We need to form a strong alliance of all those who oppose violence on our streets.
“We cannot abandon the good honest men, women and children of parts of our inner city.”
Archbishop Martin issued the statement following two gun murders within two hours of each other – the sixth and seventh deaths on the streets of the capital this year linked to gangland feuds, vendettas, organised crime and personal disputes.
He said everyone has a duty to act and he pleaded for people with information on crime to bring it to gardai.
“The elderly live in fear. Their children are exposed to carnage on their streets,” Archbishop Martin said.
“Their neighbourhood is being vilified; they are held to ransom by despicable people involved in the rackets of death.
“The promoters of violence think that they can impose their interests on society: we have to show them that together we are stronger than them and that we can bring them down.”
Archbishop Martin previously spoke out to condemn two other murders in the Kinahan-Hutch war.
In February he called on “mothers and grandmothers” of those involved to appeal to their humanity and urge them to step back from the feared spiral of violence.
He spoke out after taxi driver Eddie Hutch was shot dead at home in Dublin’s north inner city in an apparent retaliation for a fatal gun attack at the Regency Hotel last Friday.
A month later he used his Holy Thursday homily to condemn the murder of Noel Duggan, an old associate of Gerry “The Monk” Hutch, in the driveway of his home in Ratoath, Co Meath.
The Archbishop reiterated his pleas for the violence to stop.
“Everyone has a responsibility,” he said. “Those who cultivate violence thrive on our silence.
“We have to unite to undermine them and their business and not close our eyes to what we know.”
The Archbishop also recalled the words of Martin Luther King on putting an end to violence, who said “somewhere somebody must have a little sense” and that the “strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil”.