Lord Saville’s comprehensive report into the events in Londonderry on 30 January 1972 has come 38 years too late. Had the Bloody Sunday massacre of 13 innocent civil-rights demonstrators by members of the Parachute Regiment been properly investigated immediately afterwards, decades of strife could have been averted. Bloody Sunday became by far the IRA’s best recruiting officer – not just the day itself, but the sense that there was no justice to be had from a British Establishment that had quickly closed ranks.

Lord Widgery’s hasty and ill-judged report had exonerated the British soldiers and accused the victims, in effect, of being terrorists who deserved to be shot. It was that sense of injustice which drove the campaign by survivors and families, of which the Saville report is the ultimate vindication. That says something significant about this pivotal day for Northern Ireland. In the respectable Catholic community in Derry, at that time and since, the accusation of being an IRA terrorist brought shame. Yet in the view of much of British public opinion, an opinion common in the British army as well as among Unionists and Loyalists, being a Northern Irish Catholic activist and being a member of the IRA were virtually identical. Only that can explain why the soldiers opened fire, and why Lord Widgery said they were right to do so. Indeed, the allegation that the civil-rights campaign was a front for the IRA was the message of Dr Ian Paisley and his followers at the time. They also claimed that the grievances the civil-rights campaigners said they were protesting at were imaginary, so did not need to be taken seriously. And Lord Widgery put his stamp on that lie.

The Saville report is therefore more than a vindication of the 13 who died, more than an indictment of the soldiers who shot them. This wider perspective should make it easier to answer the crucial question – what should happen now? The Prime Minister insisted in the House ...

Preparations for Pope Benedict XVI’s state visit to Britain in September have evidently not been going as smoothly as they might. A lack of information and evidence of uncertainty about the itinerary, even 12 weeks before it starts, have fuelled speculation that the organisers risk the problems overwhelming them. Mgr Andrew Summersgill, visit coordinator on behalf of the Bishops’ Conferences of England ...

Israel’s botched interception of an armada of ships trying to bring relief supplies into Gaza has now lost the nation its few remaining friends in the region, including Turkey and Egypt. The shooting that began when the boarding party was resisted by crew and passengers led to loss of life and serious injury in a confused and panicky affray on the lead vessel, the Turkish-owned Mavi Marmara. But the incompetence ...

After the shorter and the longer version of the inter-party agreement at the heart of Britain’s new coalition Government comes the Queen’s Speech, the legislative programme to translate these ideas into policy and law. There are distinctively Liberal Democrat components in the speech, and there are some that have survived from the Conservative manifesto. But this is not a traditional Tory or Thatcherite ...

At last weekend’s Kirchentag event in Munich, where Pope Benedict was once archbishop, there was disappointment that he did not attend. The massive interchurch gathering, for the second time in its history involving Catholics as well as Protestants, was a striking sign that ecumenism can still warm the blood in the land of Martin Luther, even if the impression is given that the Vatican has gone cold on the subject. ...