PASSINGS: Cardinal Cahal Daly, Georgina Parkinson

Cardinal Cahal Daly

Criticized IRA violence

Roman Catholic Cardinal Cahal Daly, 92, a philosopher who was outspokenly critical of IRA violence during his leadership of the Irish church during the 1980s, died Thursday in Belfast, where he had been hospitalized for heart problems.

Daly often criticized the killings and policies of the IRA and its allied Sinn Fein party during his tenure as bishop of Down and Connor, which includes Belfast, from 1982 to 1990. He was widely credited with writing a speech Pope John Paul II delivered in Ireland in 1979, when the pontiff begged the IRA “on my bended knees” to end its campaign.

The third of seven children, Daly was born on Oct. 1, 1917, in Loughguile, Ireland, and was educated at St. Malachy’s College in Belfast and St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth, where he was ordained in 1941. He studied in Paris for a few years before returning to St. Malachy’s as a classics master in 1945. In 1963, he began teaching at Belfast’s Queen’s University.

The author of several books, he wrote background papers for Irish ecclesiastics attending the Second Vatican Council before being consecrated bishop in 1967. He was bishop of Ardagh when he contributed to Pope John Paul’s key speech calling on the IRA to abandon its terror tactics.

In 1990, he was named archbishop of Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, and led the church in both parts of Ireland. He was elevated to cardinal in 1991 and retired in 1996.

His death brought tributes from Irish and British leaders, including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said Daly had set “a real and lasting example of effective religious leadership working to build peace and resolve conflict in the most challenging of circumstances.”

Georgina Parkinson

Principal ballet dancer, coach

Georgina Parkinson, 71, a highly acclaimed principal dancer with England’s Royal Ballet before she became a ballet mistress and coach at American Ballet Theater, died Dec. 18 in New York City of complications of cancer.

Known for her beauty and stage presence, she made her breakthrough in Bronislava Nijinska’s experimental revival of “Les Biches” for the Royal Ballet in 1964. She created roles in Frederick Ashton’s “Monotones II” and “Enigma Variations.” She also was memorable as Rosaline in Kenneth MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet” and as the Austrian archduke’s mother in MacMillan’s “Mayerling,” the performance that concluded her career with the Royal Ballet.

In 1978, she was named ballet mistress by American Ballet Theater and spent most of the next three decades teaching and coaching other dancers, including Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gelsey Kirkland, Cynthia Gregory and Fernando Bujones.

She occasionally performed, including the roles of the stepmother in Agnes de Mille’s “Fall River Legend,” Lady Capulet in “Romeo and Juliet,” and the queen in “The Sleeping Beauty.” She created the role of Mrs. Harriman in Twyla Tharp’s “Everlast” and a leading role in Robert Hill’s “Reverie.”

Parkinson was born in Brighton, England, on Aug. 20, 1938. The nuns in her convent school recognized her talent and advised her parents to seek formal ballet training for their daughter.

She studied at the Audrey Kent school in Brighton and later at the school of the Royal Ballet. She joined the Royal Ballet in 1957.

-- times staff and wire reports

[email protected]