Carraig an Aifrinn

Publication Instance Details #1953

Publication Overview

Translation	Is Multilingual	Explicit Irish Context?	Ekphrasis	Has Paratext?	Reference to News, Media or Technology
No	No	Yes	No	No	No

Details

Human Rights Issues	State Violence Assassination Other
Irish Context	Colonization and Colonial Legacy (Ireland)
Languages	Irish
Genre	Short Lyric
Medium	Print Collection
Notes	The speaker of the poem reflects on incidences of lack of freedom of conscience and religion throughout history: the Penal Laws in 17th, 18th, and 19th century Ireland; the suppression of Christians in ancient Rome; and the assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero in El Salvador on 24 March 1980. Archbishop Romero was opposed to the right-wing military junta of the country, and after a sermon proclaiming that the Salvadoran soldiers should resist the government's infringement of human rights and stop carrying out their repressive tactics, he was shot dead. The speaker differentiates between the Catholic faith and the institutional church; there may be an implicit reference to modern-day church scandals in Ireland in the final verse of the poem.