Michael McGoldrick Passes Away

Michael McGoldrick, who became a peace activist in Northern Ireland after anti-Catholic extremists killed his son in 1996, died while on a Christian aid mission to Moldova. He was 64.

The Rev. Martin McAlinden, the McGoldricks' parish priest in Moyraverty, Northern Ireland, said McGoldrick suffered an apparent heart attack or stroke while delivering supplies in Moldova for the Christian charity he helped found.

McGoldrick's son, a 31-year-old taxi driver also named Michael, was abducted and fatally shot on July 8, 1996, two days after graduating from a Belfast university. He was the first victim of the Loyalist Volunteer Force, an outlawed Protestant gang that opposed Northern Ireland's peace process but called a cease-fire two years later - after the landmark Good Friday peace accord.

McGoldrick, who credited his son's death with driving him to lead a better life, frequently campaigned on behalf of peace and, specifically, the 1998 accord that sought to forge a stable Catholic-Protestant government.

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