An Irish preacher accused of “hijacking” this year’s Remembrance Sunday service in Dublin Cathedral with an anti-Israel sermon reportedly disclosed his family’s link to Adolf Hitler at the same service in 2019.
Canon David Oxley, who accused Israel of deploying a “master race” theory in a speech to senior Irish politicians at St Patrick’s Cathedral last week, was said to have admitted that his wife’s family were Nazis during the Second World War in his address at the same event five years ago.
According to a report of the 2019 service in the Irish Independent, he told the cathedral that the mother of his wife, Amalia Oxley, was German, and he had relatives who fought for the Third Reich.
He also said, according to the article: “It’s not everyone who can boast that their mother-in-law had Adolf Hitler as a godfather. It’s not everyone who would want to.”
Later, the minister said that the service “was commemorating the sacrifice of many individual Irish men and women who did take sides and volunteered to oppose Nazism in arms”.
Both services – the one this year and in 2019 – were attended by Irish President Michael D Higgins and first lady Sabina Higgins, as well as other Irish dignitaries.
In his 2019 address, the Anglican cleric went on to preach about the “cynical disregard of truth” and “the deliberate manipulation of information” that he said had become “endemic at the highest levels and has proved corrosive and destructive” to our society.
“In the conflict between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, neutrality is not an option,” Oxley added.
He also referred to Ireland’s neutrality during the Second World War. “There is no room for neutrality in the conflict between truth and falsehood,” he said.
The report about Oxley surfaced in the wake of his comments at a Remembrance Sunday service at Ireland’s national cathedral last week, when he accused Israel of committing the “horrible blasphemy of the master race in action… The elimination of others follows as a matter of course because they don’t count.”
President Michael D Higgins and Lieutenant Colonel Ken Martin, president of the Royal British Legion, lay wreaths at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin in 2019 (Photo: Gareth Chaney, Collins, Irish Independent)
Israel’s envoy to Ireland accused Oxley of a “libel against the state of Israel” and “hijacking” the solemn memorial service with his diatribe.
The church leader reaffirmed his comments when approached by the JC, stating: “I am prepared to stand over my remarks.
“There was no hatred in my sermon, except a hatred of all theories that make one group of people more valuable than another, so that some become expendable. And a hatred of merciless cruelty, regardless of who is doing it.
“In delivering my sermon, I speak only for myself. I do not speak on behalf of the Church of Ireland, or of St Patrick’s Cathedral. As our church does not believe in infallibility, it is quite conceivable that I am mistaken. No one is obliged to agree with me.”
Oxley did not respond to a request for comment about his 2019 sermon.
