City Councillor Frank Baker recently raised the specter of the conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland as he objected to a new map of Boston City Council districts that was proposed by City Councilor Liz Breadon of Brighton. Particularly insidious were Baker’s comments that Breadon’s map was an “all-out assault on Catholic life in Boston” led by “a Protestant from Fermanagh.”

Baker’s comments harkened back to a century ago when Yankee Protestants and Irish Catholics were fighting over the political control of Boston. His remarks were roundly rebuked by government officials, the Catholic archdiocese, the media, and neighborhood residents. Beyond the attempt to incite religious bigotry, Baker also disregarded the decades of work by both Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland and elsewhere to craft a peace that has now been in place for almost 25 years.

Our era has seen very few success stories about the resolving of international conflicts. The easing of the violent divide of Catholic vs. Protestant in Northern Ireland in May 1998 is one of them, a rare case of parties in a major conflict agreeing on a peace process that we can today call a success story. But it wasn’t easy.

Ireland was under the domination of the United Kingdom for centuries with occasional rebellions that were quashed by more powerful British armies. Following World War I, with a weakened Great Britain, the Irish initiated a war that resulted in the creation of the independent Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland). But in negotiations, 6 of the island’s 32 counties, all in the north with larger Protestant populations, remained within the UK. Nonetheless, the Republic of Ireland has asserted from its beginning that Northern Ireland is a sovereign part of the republic.

Protestant governance in Northern Ireland resulted in laws preventing some Catholics from voting along with gerrymandered districts that limited Catholic representation in government. Protestants controlled all levels of government and dominated the jobs market, especially the police force. They made it illegal to fly the flag of the Republic of Ireland and banned the Irish nationalist political party.

The worldwide political activism of the 1960s, especially the civil rights struggles in America, inspired Catholic activists in Northern Ireland. Indeed, Martin Luther King is considered a hero by Catholics living there.

The year 1969 marked a serious turn for the worse on the island of Ireland. In mid-August, the so-called Battle of the Bogside erupted in the northern city of Derry. Riots broke out across several days in the wake of a violent suppression by the police of a civil rights march that led to the British Army being brought to the scenes of conflict.

The presence of the troops enflamed the situation, and for the next 30 years, what came to be known as “the Troubles” featured paramilitary groups battling each other; terrorist bombings; the elimination of civil rights; hunger strikes; assassinations; 45-feet-high “peace walls” that divided Catholic and Protestant areas in Belfast across backyards and through streets with turnstile walls closed at night; and some 3,500 deaths.

As time wore on, efforts at dealing with the sectarian issues of Northern Ireland produced a momentum toward peace, including a joint decision by the UK and Ireland that governance of Northern Ireland now had to include Protestants and Catholics, and that a change in the status of Northern Ireland (i.e., whether it be part of the UK or Ireland) would be determined by a future vote of the people of Northern Ireland.

In the mid-1990s, discussions involving Ireland, the UK, and the United States led to the “Good Friday Agreement,” which created a power-sharing government and cooperation across borders. It was approved in May 1998 by 71 percent of the voters of Northern Ireland.

Following the agreement, the Codman Square Health Center was chosen as a site for programs that brought Protestant and Catholic community leaders to the United States to work together on community building projects, mainly youth programs and public health initiatives. Codman Square, which had experienced racial animosity following the desegregation decision in 1974, was seen as an innovative place that could convene Northern Ireland foes to work together in a place that felt similar to their own experiences.

The feelings of the Protestants and Catholics who came to Codman Square about the divide ran deep. Though participants had agreed to be in cross-cultural placements, they still harbored distrust toward each other. Yet most put that aside to try to build relationships that could make peace a reality.

In one such visit, a Protestant woman from Belfast who had to move suddenly from her home there when her police officer husband’s name was found on an Irish Republican Army list of people who were to be assassinated, informed me that she did not want to work with the Catholic man she was paired with. She could not overcome her bitterness at losing her home and the threats to her family.

I encouraged her to keep with the program, and later on, she told me that she had grown to like the man and considered him a friend. A couple of years afterwards, the woman’s husband came by to “see the place that helped transform [his] family.” He had left the police force to become a Presbyterian minister promoting the peace process.

Other aspects of that work involved me going to Northern Ireland and sharing with Catholic and Protestant groups about living in a multi-cultural community, working in an organization with a multi-cultural staff, and working with their desegregating police force on combatting crime.

I was also asked to observe sectarian marches, so that if conflict occurred, there would be neutral observers who would tell the real story of how it happened. In the decade I was involved, each year seemed to bring more tolerance and more peace. Overwhelmingly, the people I met, both Protestants and Catholics, were dedicated to making the peace process work, and it has held for 25 years.

Frank Baker’s remarks denigrated the decades of work of Catholics and Protestants who found the grace to put the past behind them and achieve peace in Northern Ireland. His attempt to resurrect an era that most of us believed was long buried smacks of demagoguery. In this politically divisive time, we need leaders who promote the hard, daily work of advancing peace.