page_title: John Hume
section_title: Retirement
hierarchical_section_title: John Hume / Retirement
caption_attribution_description: English: Location is along the west side of Rossville Street, south of William Street. View is to the southwest. John Hume is a Derry person who campaigned for democratic rights for the oppressed Catholics of Northern Ireland. Also depicted in this mural are Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Mother Theresa &amp; Nelson Mandela. All four people in this mural were champions of people cast aside in most societies as having no worth. All four won the Nobel Peace Prize. As all four are considered to be bridge builders, a portion of the Brooklyn Bridge is included in the mural.
context_page_description: John Hume KCSG was an Irish nationalist politician from Northern Ireland, widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the recent political history of Ireland, as one of the architects of the Northern Ireland peace process.
  A native of Derry, he was a founding member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, and served as its second leader from 1979 to 2001. He also served as a Member of the European Parliament, and a Member of the UK Parliament, as well as a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
  Hume was co-recipient of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize with David Trimble, and also a received both the Gandhi Peace Prize and the Martin Luther King Award. He is the only person to receive the three major peace awards.
  In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI made Hume a Knight Commander of the Papal Order of St. Gregory the Great.
  He was named "Ireland's Greatest" in a 2010 public poll by Irish national broadcaster RTÉ to find the greatest person in Ireland's history.
context_section_description: On 4 February 2004, Hume announced his complete retirement from politics and was succeeded by Mark Durkan as SDLP leader.  He did not contest the 2004 European election (when his seat was won by Bairbre de Brún of Sinn Féin), nor did he run in the 2005 general election, in which Mark Durkan retained the Foyle constituency for the SDLP.
  Hume and his wife, Pat, continued to be active in promoting European integration, issues around global poverty and the Credit Union movement. He was also a supporter of the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation which campaigns for democratic reformation of the United Nations. In retirement, he continued to speak publicly, including a visit to Seton Hall University in New Jersey in 2005, the first Summer University of Democracy of the Council of Europe (Strasbourg, 10–14 July 2006), and at St Thomas University, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, on 18 July 2007. A building added to the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, was named after him. Hume held the position of Club President of his local football team, Derry City F.C., which he supported all his life. He was a patron of the children's charity Plan International Ireland.
  During his final years Hume suffered from dementia, which first started displaying symptoms in the late 1990s. He died in the early hours of 3 August 2020 at a nursing home in Derry, at the age of 83. On his death, former Labour leader and Prime Minister Tony Blair said: "John Hume was a political titan; a visionary who refused to believe the future had to be the same as the past." The Dalai Lama said on Twitter "John Hume's deep conviction in the power of dialogue and negotiations to resolve conflict was unwavering... It was his leadership and his faith in the power of negotiations that enabled the 1998 Good Friday Agreement to be reached. His steady persistence set an example for us all to follow."
caption: A mural of John Hume in Derry's Bogside, alongside fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureates Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa