The Republic is virtually unrecognisable from the country Pope John Paul II encountered nearly 40 years ago.
Ahead of Pope Francis’ visit in August, JohnMeagher goes back to Knock, Co Mayo, site of a massive open-air Mass in 1979, and discovers remnants of the old Ireland still survive
It is a quiet Wednesday afternoon on Knock’s main street. Incessant rain and the gusts of what will soon become Storm Hector are keeping pilgrims away. Those who have ventured to the Mayo village take refuge from the elements in the Apparition Chapel, or the basilica, currently undergoing something of an internal facelift.
Tom Byrne has had a quiet day. He has run souvenir shops here for as long as he can remember, but with trade slow, he takes the opportunity to do a stock-take and to count the new batch of plastic holy water bottles that have arrived.
He is expecting brisk business over the next couple of months as the numbers visiting Knock increase in advance of Pope Francis’ visit.
“It will be a really great day for Knock,” he says. “We’re all so happy he is coming here.”
Byrne was present in the village on that day in September 1979 when John Paul II became the first pontiff to visit Ireland.
“If it wasn’t for the centenary of the apparition, he wouldn’t have come to Ireland at all,” he adds. “But Monsignor Horan had done a lot of work to convince him that he should come here.”
Byrne recalls the former parish priest of Knock with great fondness. It was the visionary James Horan who had an airport built up the road in the boggy common ground near Charlestown.
“He married me in 1975,” he says. “He was a really great man who wanted the best for Knock. He wanted people to be able to come here from all over the world. That’s what happens today.”
The Ireland that Pope Francis will visit in August is unrecognisable to the one that John Paul II toured almost four decades ago.
From a devout, God-fearing land where the Catholic Church ruled, the Ireland of 2018 has never felt more secular.
This week, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told the Dail that he abhorred the situation where some liberals had made “pariahs” out of those with deep Catholic faith: “I do not believe in the socialist ideology, which is to push religion out of the public space and force people who are religious to be ashamed they have religious convictions.”
It would have been unthinkable for then-Taoiseach Jack Lynch to utter such words in the weeks before John Paul II came.
That Ireland was a place without divorce and abortion, where the purchase of contraceptives was illegal and where homosexuality was deemed a crime. Mass attendance was high and dissenting voices were few.
Fast-forward to the present day to an Ireland where divorce was legalised in 1995 and condoms can be bought easily over the counter. It’s a country where two-thirds of the electorate voted to make abortion legal for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and where gay marriage has been written into the constitution. Church-going has slumped in most parishes and now it’s those who espouse religious belief who must feel like they are in the minority.
Back in 1961, 94.9% of the population claimed to be Catholic. Today, that stands at 78.3%.
For a country that was among the last in the world to ban divorce, there were more than 73,000 Catholic divorcees in Ireland in 2016.
Tom Moloney is sitting in silent contemplation in the Basilica of Our Lady Queen of Ireland — by far the largest of Knock’s five churches. He is in his early 70s and is visiting today from Tuam, Co Galway. Like many who make the pilgrimage here, he is seriously ill: colon cancer has spread to his lungs and he offers up private prayer.
Knock is a special place for him, he says. He has travelled many times and feels great solace when surrounded by other people with strong faith.
“The country has changed,” he adds, sadly. “A lot of the young people have turned from
God and it is very sad to see. It was very different in 1979. I was in Galway (at Ballybrit Racecourse) to see the Pope then and there was such excitement for old and young.
“It won’t be like that this time. Too many young people have left the Church.”
A pair of pilgrims from Co Tyrone, Collete Given and Patrick McEnhill, have chosen an especially wet day to visit Knock. They have been coming here for years. “It’s a welcoming place,” Collete says. “For those of us with a strong faith, there’s nowhere else like it in Ireland.”
She is dismayed at how secular Ireland has become, especially when contemplating the fact that two out of every three votes were in favour of abortion rights in last month’s referendum. But she says it’s a source of solace that more than 700,000 people voted No.
Many of them are proud of their Catholic faith, she insists, even if modern-day Ireland can be a cold place for them.
“It feels like a foreign place,” she says. “A ‘me, myself and I’ culture rules now.
“There just isn’t the sort of dependence on God as there was when I was their age.”
“It’s a pity what’s been lost,” Patrick adds, “but maybe when Pope Francis comes here, some people might be encouraged to return.”
Wendy Grace is a presenter on the Dublin-based Christian station Spirit Radio. She has met Pope Francis in the past and is excited at the prospect of his visit. Grace, who was a high-profile campaigner for a No vote in the abortion referendum, says the pontiff ’s appeal is wide-ranging and encompasses those “of all religions and none”.
It is sad to see that a lot of young people have turned from God