It's seldom, if ever, you will hear and see the Rev Ian Paisley praising a Jesuit but you'll witness this miracle tonight if you tune into TG4 at 9.30pm for a film about Tory's Island's former pastor, Fr Diarmuid Ó Péicín.
The film, Fear na nOileán, is a tribute to Fr Ó Péicín, but also to the islanders who in the late 1970s and early 1980s fought a drive to see the island abandoned and transformed into a firing range for the Irish Army - to cite one of four proposals.
Tonight's film about the 90-year-old Jesuit features a disparate cast of characters ranging from the DUP leader to the current Bishop of Derry, Dr Séamus Hegarty; Clannad, whose musical inspiration comes from Tory; politicians and priests who felt the lash of his tongue; and even Charles Haughey, who liked and admired the priest but nonetheless was tight enough with the purse-strings.
The film tells how Fr Ó Péicín, who initially arrived on the island in 1980 for a couple of months to learn Irish, fought the island's case with Donegal County Council and with the Government, and how he then brought Tory's plight to the attention of Washington and Strasbourg, where he enlisted the support of Scottish MEP Winnie Ewing and of Dr Paisley.
Fear na nOileán makes uncomfortable viewing for Ireland's church and State of the period because, as it shows, in the four years he was on Tory, before being ordered off by Bishop Hegarty, Fr Ó Péicín achieved more for the island than any priest, prelate or politician before him.
What galvanised Fr Ó Péicín was the decision of Donegal County Council to offer islanders 10 houses on the mainland rather than spending a similar amount of money to provide basic rights such as island housing, full-time electricity, a proper water supply, a safe harbour, a ferry, road improvements, jobs, a secondary school and tourist business. Mainly because of Fr Ó Péicín, all of these amenities and more were achieved or set in train while he was there.
At the time I worked for the Donegal Democrat and wrote regularly about his campaign and managed to expose how there were official proposals to get everyone off Tory and use the island as an Army firing range, or a holiday village for rich Americans, or a quarantine centre, or a high-security prison.
Officialdom didn't have much faith in Tory or its people all those years ago. But it's faring well now, and that's in large measure down to Fr Ó Péicín and the courageous islanders - some alive, some now dead - who battled with him and won against the odds.
"He has lit a fire that has never gone out in Europe and Europe must look after its island people," Dr Paisley says on the programme. Of Fr Ó Péicín he adds, "He was an excellent presenter of the case for the people of the island. He was a very able ambassador, and he knew what he was talking about."
