Yvonne Webb

Mem­bers of the Ro­man Catholic Church are dis­tanc­ing them­selves from com­ments made by Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning that Makan­dal Daa­ga should apol­o­gise for his role in the 1970 des­e­cra­tion of the Cathe­dral in Port-of-Spain.

Some Catholics said yes­ter­day the late Arch­bish­op An­tho­ny Pan­tin was sym­pa­thet­ic to the cause of the Black Pow­er Move­ment and was sched­uled to march with them to Ca­roni. Sev­er­al young priests were among those who joined that his­toric march, they said. Mem­bers of the church cred­it­ed the move­ment with caus­ing the church to iden­ti­fy with the cause and Pan­tin, who main­tained a cor­dial re­la­tion­ship with Daa­ga and his wife Liseli, to work and live in Laven­tille for a num­ber of years. Ms­gr Cuth­bert Alexan­der, head of the Catholic Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Unit, said: "This is not the time we would like to make any par­tic­u­lar com­ment on the mat­ter.

"Maybe af­ter the elec­tion is over we can make some very clear his­tor­i­cal qual­i­fi­ca­tion on what hap­pened," he of­fered. Sev­er­al RC priests yes­ter­day scoffed at Man­ning's sug­ges­tion at a PNM po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in San Fer­nan­do on Tues­day night. Man­ning had said Daa­ga, one of the Op­po­si­tion's coali­tion part­ners, should is­sue a let­ter of com­fort to the lead­er­ship of the church.

The cler­gy­men, who spoke off the record, said the state­ments were too loaded and pre­ferred not to be quot­ed. "Apol­o­gy, let­ter of com­fort, that is not nec­es­sary. NJAC has mel­lowed," one priest said. An­oth­er priest said the move­ment was on­ly look­ing for a voice to ex­press their so­cial con­cerns.

An­oth­er mem­ber of the church said: "Be se­ri­ous. The Prime Min­is­ter said that, on the hus­tings, some­thing that hap­pened 40 years ago. Se­ri­ous­ly, I think there are more se­ri­ous is­sues to re­port on." Man­ning in at­tempt­ing to ed­u­cate the mass­es who at­tend­ed the ral­ly, re­called that in the height of the Black Pow­er Move­ment in 1970, which gave rise to the Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC) and Daa­ga, the demon­stra­tors moved in­to the cathe­dral, paint­ed the stat­ues black and des­e­crat­ed the holy place. Man­ning said: "As far as I know Daa­ga has nev­er apol­o­gised for that. Nev­er said he was sor­ry he was as­so­ci­at­ed with any such thing. I want to ask him are your views now the same as your views then?