DEAN of Belfast the Very Rev John Mann said Northern Ireland should harness the passion that built Titanic to create a better future for the Province.
He was speaking at a special service in St Anne’s Cathedral yesterday afternoon in what the church turned into a commemoration, celebration, remembrance and thanksgiving on the anniversary of the sinking of Titanic.
The Titanic Pall – a type of covering for a coffin made out of silk, rayon, metallic and cotton threads – was dedicated during the service which was attended Belfast deputy Lord Mayor Ruth Patterson, Vice Lord–Lieutenant of the County Borough of Belfast Sir Nigel Hamilton, junior minister Jonathan Bell and chief executive of Titanic Belfast Tim Husbands.
Mr Mann expressed concern that less attention was being paid to those who died on Titanic to the engineering achievement that it was to build.
“Within the human stories that have been much related in recent weeks the underlying fact of huge loss of life in a single accident is hard to miss, yet, as some newspaper columnists have pointed out, perhaps we have been more attentive to the glory of the liner than the scale of the tragedy,” he said.
“Anyone who comments on public events is aware that achieving a balance, when it comes to matters that have both positive and negative aspects, is very difficult, in fact they recognise that they are on a hiding to nothing, as people will always see things differently and promote their own perspective.
“So we live these days in a city that brings celebration and commemoration, remembrance and thanksgiving into some kind of slightly uncomfortable whole.”
The Dean highlighted the development of the Titanic Quarter, a district of arts centres, apartments, exhibition spaces and entertainment outlets, and said it symbolised the sense of purpose in the descendants of those who built the Titanic. He said that in these difficult financial times, the passion that went into Titanic could act as inspiration.
“The days are long gone when a shipyard employing 30,000 would occupy what we now know as the Titanic Quarter, nor must we rest on past laurels, but produce a society in which everyone is valued, encouraged and made part of – what we as a city are concerned to have in abundance – a people who are a blessing to each other and a source of envy to the rest of the world,” he said.
“We may not make another Titanic, but we will, please God, continue to build a society that honours its past sacrifices, recognises its failures, celebrates its successes and works towards producing a healed and renewed people whose experience of difficult times will stand it in good stead in meeting very different challenges which ask the best of us all.”
Following the service the congregation joined clergy on a walk from the cathedral to the Titanic Quarter, finishing at the Thompson Graving Dock.