AS the legend goes, it was the first island where St Colmcille could not see his homeland.
Last Saturday president Michael D Higgins
paid tribute to one of Ireland's great exiles when he travelled to the
remote Scottish Hebridean island of Iona, from where the Donegal-born
saint was credited with spreading Christianity to Scotland.
It
seemed all 125 residents of the picturesque island, which has been a
place of pilgrimage and Christian worship for the last 1,400 years, were
there to greet Mr Higgins and his wife Sabina,
It
was Mr Higgins's second visit to the UK last week, following a two-day
trip to England, and was to mark the 1,450th anniversary of St
Colmcille's landing on the remote Scottish Island.
In 563, the
saint and 12 companions arrived, following his exile from Ireland after a
dispute with St Finnian, prompting the folklore that he settled on Iona
as it was far enough away to be out of sight of Ireland.
Mr
Higgins paid tribute to the "Dove of the Church", who is known
as St Columba in Scotland, while condemning the sectarianism that
sometimes follows migration.
The comments followed his criticism last
week of the riots in Belfast and a demand that community leaders there accept their responsibilities to act in the face of the violence.
"Societies
benefit from hearing many voices, but surely no benefits are to be
derived from voices raised against one another in hate or intolerance
based very often on an abuse of myth and history," he told an audience
on the island.
"The prevalence of sectarianism or xenophobia
within a community we know may be a symptom of its members feeling
themselves ignored, rejected by those in power or under threat from
wider socio-economic pressures. It is an atmosphere prevalent in
European cities today."
The President also spoke of how the last century had seen "intense conflict" in Ireland and other countries.
"To
fail to recognise this would be to do a disservice to our history. But
remembrance of a period of conflict or division does not, in itself,
exacerbate such conflict," he said.
After his speech, the President walked a short distance to the St Oran's graveyard, where John Smith, the former leader of the British Labour Party, and where the grave os Scottish king Macbeth – who died in 1057 – is located.