When John Paul II visited Ireland in 1979 more than 2.5 million people flocked to events across the country in an outpouring of support for their new Polish pope. Thirty-seven years later Ireland is bracing itself for another papal visit – expected in 2018, at the invitation of Prime Minister Enda Kenny – but it is difficult to imagine such enthusiasm being replicated.
In the Irish Times last week, Fr Gerard Moloney went so far as to ask whether Ireland deserved such a visit. He concluded that “our battered priests and people” are definitely worthy but “the same cannot be said for our Church leaders.”
Exasperation with the Church’s hierarchy following a devastating clerical abuse scandal is not surprising, but as Someone else once pointed out, it’s not the healthy that need a visit from the doctor but the sick.
Francis is a Pope who has prioritised visiting countries that need some papal TLC. Ireland’s painful history may have persuaded Francis that a trip is necessary now more than ever.
For one thing, the visit will be a national morale boost – it has already been welcomed by both Catholic and Protestant leaders. Greg Daly of the Irish Catholic says: “Pope Francis is liked even if the good feeling towards him isn’t especially deep. Fairly or not, he’s seen as a more decent, humbler, warmer man than Benedict, and also as someone who gets ordinary people and tells it like it is.”
As an example of Irish goodwill towards the Pope, Daly points to Marie Collins, an abuse survivor who is on the Pope’s commission to strengthen child protection. “She is someone with unimpeachable credibility on the child protection issue, she’s become a wonderful hinge between Ireland and Rome, and is playing a key role in the Vatican’s child protection commission.”
If respected figures such as Collins consider the Pope a friend, it is more likely that the media and the public will welcome Francis’s visit to Ireland, delivering a genuine morale boost for the country and the Church.
Second, the political establishment could benefit from the papal visit. As the journalist Mary Kenny wrote recently in the Irish Independent, “Small countries need big friends. Ireland had a ‘big friend’ in the EU for a good 30 years, but a much enlarged and arguably less stable EU has a smaller place for Ireland. Ireland had a powerful trading – and a strong cultural – relationship with Britain, but what will happen to that after Brexit?”
Moreover, the Irish political class has been frosty towards Donald Trump. If Ireland risks political isolation, a rapprochement with the Holy See is clearly a “policy of practical politics,” Kenny wrote.
Greg Daly suspects the impact of Brexit on Ireland will make the papal visit all the more beneficial. “The Good Friday Agreement actually rests on a treaty commitment that both Ireland and the UK will work together as EU partners to build their relations,” he notes. “Francis could be arriving at a time when the entire Northern constitutional settlement, as based on the Good Friday Agreement, is being cast into doubt. If so, he will surely want to call the Christians of the North to remember what they all have in common and to continue working for peace.”
Enda Kenny’s enthusiasm for the Pope is perhaps surprising after he launched a blistering attack on the Vatican in 2011 following the Cloyne Report on clerical abuse. There have also been positive noises from other unusual suspects including Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Féin deputy first minister, who has welcomed the Pope’s visit.
Alban Maginness, who represents another nationalist party, the SDLP, has challenged McGuinness on this point. In a piece for the Belfast Telegraph, Maginness noted that Sinn Féin had ignored John Paul II’s famous plea in 1979 to uphold the sanctity of human life and reject violence. Maginness suggested that if McGuinness was “truly sincere” in his enthusiasm for the Pope, “he should seriously reflect on the Pope’s teaching that abortion is a grievous wrong.”
The issue has special resonance at the moment, as the Repeal the Eighth campaign seeks to overturn Ireland’s constitutional protection of the unborn child. And this also makes the Pope’s visit a great opportunity. While Pope Francis may not convince Sinn Féin about abortion, he might persuade the Irish public if he speaks up for the rights of unborn children.
Ireland’s leaders may get more than they bargained for in 2018.
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