N IRELAND : JOHN HUME 1937 - 2020

John Hume, a moderate Roman Catholic politician who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his dogged and ultimately successful campaign to end decades of bloodshed in his native Northern Ireland, died in the northern city of Derry.

''It seems particularly apt for these strange and fearful days to remember the phrase that gave hope to John and so many of us through dark times : We shall overcome,'' his family said.

Mr. Hume a former French teacher who was known as for a sharp wit but rarely for rhetorical flourishes, rose from hardscrabble beginnings to become the longtime leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party and a towering figure in the drive to end 25 years of the Troubles, as Northern Ireland's strife were known.

In his campaign for peace, inspired by the example of the Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, he employed a winning combination of public exhortation against the violence of the Irish Republican Army and secret diplomacy with the political leadership, sitting down for talks in his modest row house over coffee.

He deftly enlisted the White House to help him reach the goal.

His efforts were recognised when he shared the Nobel Prize with the Protestant leader David Trimble in 1998, the year of the Good Friday peace agreement, which crowned his commitment to ending the unrest that had claimed more than 3,000 lives.

A television poll in the Irish Republic in 2010 pronounced Mr. Hume ''Ireland's Greatest,'' and in 2012 Pope Benedict XVI awarded him a papal Knighthood.

The World Students Society thanks author Alan Cowel.