The last time the Pope visited Ireland
Pope Francis with President Michael Higgins.
August 25 & 26, 2018
It was a typical late August weekend in Ireland. Rainy. Windy. Cold. Pope Francis landed that Saturday morning at Dublin Airport aboard an Air Italia charter flight. He was about to spend 36 hours in Ireland. This was the first Papal visit to what was once one of Europe’s most Catholic countries, since Pope John Paul II visited in 1979. And only the second Papal visit ever.
There is currently no plan for Pope Leo to visit Ireland.
A look back at that visit to Ireland eight years ago reveals what a different institution the Catholic Church had become in the 39 years since the previous Papal visit. And what a different nation Ireland had become.
Pope Francis meets Modern Ireland
It’s hard to say what was top of mind for most Irish people when Pope Francis came to town in 2018. Catholics of all ages were losing their religion. Profound societal change meant empty pews.
*Regular attendance at Mass had fallen from 92% in 1979 to 25% by 2018.
*Ireland voters had been the first anywhere to sanction same sex marriages in 2015. Against the wishes of the Catholic church.
*Irish voters had previously approved divorce and abortion. By large majorities. Also, against urgings from priests not to.
*Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s political leader (Taoiseach), officially greeted the Pope and had a ten-minute private audience with him. It was considered newsworthy that he’s gay. (“… (The Pope) welcomed people back to the church who had previously felt unaccepted. For a lot of people, and certainly for me as somebody who was raised Catholic, who did my communion and confirmation, but felt remote from the church for a long time, I think the way he reached out to groups like ours, like LGBT people, did matter and certainly made me feel more comfortable going to church services,” said Varadkar of the Pope’s visit,” Vardkar would say.)
But it was the church scandals the Pope could not ignore. Besides clerical sex abuse, he specifically cited “Magdalene Laundries, mother and baby homes, industrial schools” as places where the most vulnerable were victims of a corrupt system.
“I beg forgiveness,” Pope Francis said at Knock, where the Virgin Mary appeared in 1879 and where John Paul II said Mass in 1979.
Crowd size
Organizers of the 2018 papal visit must have known this one would not be like the previous Papal visit. While crowds packed the Pope’s route through Dublin then, this time they were described as “one deep” in many places. Pope Francis did draw a capacity crowd of 82,000 to Croke Park, where he was entertained by singer Andrea Bocelli and the latest cast of Riverdance with a somewhat risqué set piece. Check it out here.
Mass the next day at the Marian Shrine in Knock (Co. Mayo) drew a capacity crowd of 42,000 worshippers. But the main event of the visit – outdoor Mass at Phoenix Park in Dublin on Sunday – had to be a disappointment. Half a million tickets were distributed. The crowd that showed up was estimated at 152,000. More than 1.25 million attended the Papal Mass in Phoenix Park 40 years earlier. It was estimated in 1979 that 2.5 million people - one half of the entire population of the Republic of Ireland - turned out to see Pope John Paul II.
Photos and Quotes
Further reading
Photos – If you’d like to see how Ireland looked as Pope Francis arrived, there are any number of galleries available. Here’s one.Here’s another.
Quotes – Hour-by-hour coverage of the Pope’s visit provides these quotes:
“In these years Ireland has had its winter moments but also its moments of spring. Those of us who know what an Irish winter is like – and we have had good experience of that this year – know also what happens when the first rays of spring sun emerge. Ireland changes.”Archbishop Diarmuid Martin
The Pope offered this advice on achieving familial bliss. “Even if the argument tempts you to sleep in another room, alone and apart, just knock on the door and say, ‘Please can I come in?’ All it takes is a look, a kiss, a soft word, and everything is back to the way it was.”
On the flight back to the Vatican, Pope Francis took questions from reporters.Javier Romero of Rome Reports asked him, “What do you think, what would you say to a father whose son says he is homosexual, that he would like to go live with his… this is the first question.”
Pope Francis responded.
“To ignore a son or daughter with homosexual tendencies is a lack of paternity and maternity. You are my son, you are my daughter as you are! I’m your father,mother. Let’s talk! And if you, father and mother aren’t up to it, ask for help, but always in dialogue because that son and that daughter have the right to a family and that family of not being chased out of the family.”
What everyone said can be read here, compliments of the Irish Catholic Bishop’s Conference.