PAPAL VISIT 2018

During the preparation  for Pope John Paul the Second's visit to Ireland in 1979 two representatives of  northern loyalist militant groups - UDA and Red Hand Commandos - asked for an interview with Cardinal Tomás ÓFiaich. He met them in his home, Ara  Coeli, Armagh.

They asked him to  use his influence to persuade the Pope to come north across  the border.  They assured the Cardinal that he would be welcomed,  pointing out that all he need  do was travel through a short corridor from the Republic of Ireland up to Armagh.

The Cardinal promised  he would do his  best - many people other than Catholics wanted the Pope to come over the border and said so publicly and privately.

But no matter how many people wanted the papal visit north to happen there were political and diplomatic problems:  if the Pope visited Ireland's  northeast in the context of a visit to the south this could be interpreted as a political statement that Ireland, north  and south, was all one. If he visited in the context of a visit to Britain that could be interpreted as a papal statement that it was part of Britain.  And the British government might succeed in  becoming partners in the visit- this was a time when Vatican Radio commenting  on  Ireland referred to Britain as "the mainland".  Either way the visit could have  a political meaning unacceptable to the British government  or to many Catholics in the northeast. Which then to choose?  Neither.  The "security situation" was given as a reason for refusing the northern visit, especially the killing of Lord Mountbatten. 

There was a permanent diplomatic representative of the Pope  in Dublin, Archbishop Gaetano Alibrandi. A permanent diplomatic representative in Britain, Archbishop Bruno  Heim, was living  in Wimbledon. Each was a vital link between the Pope and Catholic people in each country. However, Bruno Heim's  job as papal representative did not extend to N. Ireland. Gaetano Alibrandi's job as Papal Nuncio to Ireland did. It extended to all Ireland. The Irish Bishops however  had told him he need not be concerned  further north than Dundalk.

Who then was the effective personal representative of the Pope for northern Irish Catholics during  their years of upheaval and near disaster in the late seventies?  Apparently neither Alibrandi in Dublin nor Heim in Wimbledon. We know this  from what these men said.

 Some Catholic clergy believed  Cardinal Conway in Armagh during some of the seventies period  had undertaken the functions of Nuncio but this was not announced publicly. The Cardinal died in 1977.

However, even if  the Papal Nuncio was restricted from coming North, that did not hinder people from the North going to see him. Fortunately he kept an open door for them.

This curious situation meant that quite different accounts of what was happening in Ireland's northeast were  going to Rome. The Pope's 1979 speeches reflected little awareness of the reality of the political and church life of the tens of thousands of people who came down from the north to see and hear him. 

A few years before his visit in 1979 a programme of torture had started under government command  in  N.Ireland.  Since the end of the second world war international Catholic associations had been more and more forward in condemning torture, but at Drogheda, a few miles from the nearest identified torture centre, the Pope's well-crafted sermon did not mention this startling abuse of power and morality happening nearby.  He begged the young people however  not to use "violence", presumably against the government.

 In the years  following the 1979 papal visit other failures to recognise the real roots of the economic,  political and moral problems Irish people were  facing would be revealed.

The visit in 1979 was looked forward to with  enthusiasm and  hope for peace rather than for mere political stability.

But soon afterwards  N.Ireland  entered a period of even greater pain for both people and church.

Perhaps people expected too much, as if peace would come from leaders at the top rather than from people who too often are at the bottom.  Internationally many Christians and other religious people realised this, but governments at home and abroad were convinced that what they deemed peace could be got only by identifying and beating down their perceived enemies, even if their perceived enemies were citizens whom the governments were pledged to protect and foster.    

Pope John Paul mentioned Archbishop Helder Camara but did not stress  Camara's advice that in a spiral of violence governments are often the primary aggressors. Many of those who came to hear the Pope in Ireland may have gone home feeling  embalmed rather than enlivened, with a message of stability based on the past  rather than one of flourishing in a marvellous present and possible future.

The Irish child abuse scandal did not cause the church's chaos in the years after the Visit. It was like a tumour bursting open suddenly and revealing so many  other ills that were there as well, intellectual caging, feminine and gender restriction, over-centralisation, failure to offer  a present-day ideal of spiritual and intellectual life in which  Faith would set  us free to develop the best and  most hopeful in us all. 

But what could even a pope say unless he had sound advice about what is really happening to those to whom he is talking?  Different messages were being sent to him before he came. The most powerful was that of the British government; the most accurate and probably the politically least likely to be accepted was  going through Alibrandi. Future research may make clear what messages from N. Ireland were sent to Rome and who  sent them. Alibrandi would probably have made sure  his open door  was a help.

After a triumphant hopeful Eucharistic Congress  in Dublin in 1932 the Catholic Church could not prevent the international war starting, neither could it lessen the increasingly severe war in N. Ireland in the years after the 1979 papal visit. What seemed a triumphant church in1932 and  a confident church organisation in 1960 had to endure the loss of congregations, drastic fall in the numbers of those who wanted to be priests or members of religious orders, opposition to the church's influence on education,  accepted morality, health, welfare and control of property. Even the great Council in the Vatican in the early sixties that promised change  became a source of upset and even division in the church as some Irish bishops enthusiastically supported the Council privately and publicly but others supported it in public but not  in private, and some disagreed with it simply.

For a church emerging from persecution this need not have had devastating effect . It could instead have energised the church to find its real roots in Irish and world history, examine and refresh its beliefs and practices and do much else for the practical and spiritual good of church and state.  But problems at the roots cannot be cleansed away in a flow of gentle piety. Piety can be a result of renewal, not a cause of it. Christians had inherited a programme of  radical thinking which seemed to be going to waste.

Maybe in August 2018 Pope  Francis will show  a more critical view of  problems and potential in the Irish church and  maybe whoever drafts his speeches will have the insight and courage to tell him what he really should say to bring us along with him. Or him along with us.