Archbishop Eamon Martin pays tribute to Seamus Heaney RIP

30 Aug 2013

Archbishop Eamon Martin pays tribute to Seamus Heaney RIP

We were all quietly ambushed by sadness at the announcement today of the death of Seamus Heaney RIP, Ireland’s foremost poet.  Honoured on the world stage, our Nobel Laureate was always at heart a quiet Irish man who wrote our story without rhetoric.  In his work he observed ordinary country people going about their ordinary lives.  His father, his mother, his aunts, his neighbours were Seamus’s quiet heroes as he became ours.  Anthologised for primary and secondary students for decades, his poetry excavated the past and found coordinates for the present.  He saw history as our story – the story of ordinary humankind.

Seamus Heaney was a poet of compassion, a great teacher and a gentle man in every sense.  My prayers today are with his beloved wife Marie, his sons Christopher, Michael and his daughter Catherine Anne.

May he rest in peace.

“Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dilis”

Notes to Editors

  •  Archbishop Eamon Martin, Coadjutor Archbishop of Armagh, is a former president of Saint Columb’s College in Derry.  The late Seamus Heaney was a past pupil of Saint Columb’s

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