3 Dressed as Police Kill IRA Member

Three men dressed in police uniforms killed an IRA member on Monday while Cardinal John J. O’Connor of New York delivered a sermon a mile away in which he denounced Americans who “romanticize violence” in Northern Ireland.

Brendan Davidson, 33, a member of Sinn Fein, the legal political wing of the outlawed Irish Republican Army, was shot in the head after answering a knock on his door. His assailants escaped.

Davidson was slain 48 hours after an IRA bomb killed a Protestant couple and their 6-year-old son, who had just driven across the border from the Irish Republic. The IRA took responsibility but said the attack was on the wrong target.

O’Connor learned of Davidson’s death after leaving Belfast to deliver a sermon in Armagh. He said the killing, and Saturday’s bombing, “poignantly brought into focus the stupidity, the irrationality of the cycle of the violence. . . .”

Addressing an ecumenical group, O’Connor criticized Americans who “continue to perpetuate the myth that this violence reflects the glory of Ireland, that we can stand around pianos and sing sentimental songs and believe that what occurs today is in the tradition of the martyrs and the saints.”