Ulster: the Archbishops of Armagh condemn in one voice the burning of a straw mosque

In Moygashel, a model of a mosque was burned on a loyalist bonfire on July 11. The primatial seat of Armagh, both Catholic and Anglican, responds with a rare joint statement.

The fact

Every 11th of July, the night of the big bonfires opens the loyalist commemorations of the 12th in Ulster. In Moygashel (County Tyrone), on the night of July 10-11, 2026, a life-size model of a mosque was piled atop a bonfire and burned in front of a crowd. Vatican News and the Catholic News Agency report that the two archbishops of Armagh, the Catholic primate and the primate of the Church of Ireland, issued a joint statement condemning an anti-Muslim gesture and calling for respect for religious freedom, compassion, and solidarity towards the Muslim community.

Our reading, in light of the magisterium

The shared primatial seat of Armagh is one of the few places in Europe where Catholics and Anglicans co-exercise a common moral authority. The fact that the two archbishops sign such a text together is not trivial: it is an ecumenical judgment on a loyalist community practice, in a region where the Catholic Church remains a minority and where the memory of the 1969-1998 conflicts still weighs heavily. Dignitatis Humanae (Vatican II, 1965) reminds us that religious freedom is a "right based on the very dignity of the human person" (n° 2). Nostra Aetate n° 3 urges us to "forget the past" and to work "for mutual understanding" between Catholics and Muslims. Burning a model of a place of worship, whatever it may be, injures this requirement.

To ponder

The Catholic testimony in Europe is no longer played out solely in the relationship to secularization. It is also played out in the ability to publicly defend the religious dignity of the other, even when they are not one of us. Praying for the small Muslim community of Ulster, for the civil peace of the province, and for a 12th of July that becomes a celebration rather than a provocation.