DENIS Faul was a keen Gaelic footballer with a rugged and direct style who continued to play club football until he was 37.
e carried his style of play through to his life as a human rights advocate - always prepared to tackle any opponent regardless of size or status, never afraid to face up to a bully, and prepared to put the boot in when he thought it appropriate or deserved.
That said, Monsignor Faul, as he became, was one of the great figures of Northern life over the past 35 years. He was a man of towering integrity and great moral courage who was prepared to take on abuse of power and authority wherever he saw it, regardless of whom he offended.
He was associated with the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement in Dungannon. The methodology they developed is one that Fr Faul followed for the rest of his career - research the truth, assemble the facts, and then apply the maximum pressure in public and in private on those responsible for the abuse or to those capable of correcting it.
He was an old-style nationalist, believing firmly in the democratic process and totally opposed to violence and the use of force to achieve political ends. As the headmaster of a large boys' school in a nationalist area, he was in a position to see the effect of security policies and practices on his pupils and their families and he spoke out strongly on their behalf. He was equally able to see the attempts of paramilitary organisations to capture the minds of impressionable young people, and he spoke out equally trenchantly about that.
Internment in 1971, and its aftermath of torture and ill-treatment, gave him a new sense of purpose and a high public profile. Along with a couple of like-minded priests, he founded what was virtually a prisoners' rights organisation, providing assistance for families and pursuing each and every complaint of ill-treatment or abuse of powers. In this he found himself opposed not only by the State but by the Church. The then Cardinal Conway attempted to muzzle his criticisms of the judiciary as being biased against Catholics, or at least out of touch with ordinary people. But Denis, as ever, carried on regardless.
He acted as Chaplain in Long Kesh for 20 years. He monitored the Diplock (non-jury) Courts and advised people at large of their rights under military activity, Special Branch interrogation and stop-and-search policies.
For this he was dubbed the Provo Priest. The Provos, however, were much less chuffed when they found him equally ready to denounce intimidation, punishment beatings, kneecapping, the murder of informers and the "disappearance" of those who had incurred their wrath.
Having maintained a pastoral role in the prison through the horrors of the dirty protest, he opposed the hunger strike from the beginning to the extent that prisoners began to walk out of Mass when he began to speak. More than any other person, he brought about the end of the hunger strike - and many republicans never forgave him. He marshalled the families, and particularly the mothers, to reclaim their sons after they had lost consciousness, and to authorise resuscitation.
This he did, not for any political purpose, but out of a deep respect for human life, from deep Christian convictions and his concern that young lives should not be thrown away, for the suffering of the families, and also, it must be said, from a deep sense of outrage arising from his belief that idealistic young people were being allowed, or encouraged, to martyr themselves in order to serve the political and PR ends of both wings of the republican movement.
It is interesting that his last appearance on TV was to endorse the thesis that the hunger strikes could have been settled on honourable terms much earlier and that whatever the morality of the exercise, in the later stages, lives were sacrificed unnecessarily.
From then on, he was a one-man Human Rights Watch - protesting abuse wherever he saw it, whether of youths harassed by special branch or terrorised by the IRA, RUC and UDR men shot in front of their families, or Protestant farmers ethnically cleansed along the Border, the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four and the Maguire family. The list is endless.
He was a stranger to euphemism - he never called murder anything but murder. He was the least politically correct of men. Fiercely liberal in regard to the human rights of prisoners and abuse of power by others, he was quite a conservative on most issues of social policies and in regard to women's rights. He totally opposed integrated education. To be fair, he would not himself have admitted to any inconsistency. He was an orthodox Irish Catholic of the old school.
A little known aspect was his boundless charity. He must have given the shirt off his back more often than any other man in helping those in fear to flee the country, or in helping families and support groups.
In private, he was a witty, engaging, civilised man, widely read and scholarly, cranky at times but with no trace of rancour or bigotry, always ready to challenge authority, even in the Church, when wrongly used, or to prick the pretension of pomposity.
Very few can be held to fully vindicate John Donne's proposition that one man's death diminishes us all. Fr Denis Faul was just such a man - a shining light to all in this place, and an example of courage and honesty to all.
