Two Irish families meet Pope Francis

TWO Irish families paid a visit to the Vatican yesterday to present the World Meeting of Families 2018 Icon of the Holy Family to Pope Francis.

The Tobin family from Co. Kildare, and the Bushell family, who have been living in Rome since 2016, were chosen to present the image, which was anointed by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin last August to celebrate the one year countdown to the World Meeting of Families (WMF).

Michael and Mary Bushell attended the meeting with their children Olivia, aged seven, and five-year-old Molly.

Meanwhile, the Tobin family included Brenda and Bryan, their children Emma, 20, and Cathal, 13, and grandmother Maureen.

Brenda Drum-Tobin has been working as communications officer with the Catholic Communications Office for the past 17 years and is working as media and communications manager for the WMF 2018.

Maureen, who is from Cobh, Co. Cork, said that Pope Francis was ‘very bright and very alert’, and joked that she’s only a few years behind the 81-yearold Pontiff.

‘He shook each of us by hand and he gave us with rosary beads,’ she told RTÉ’s The Ray D’Arcy Show.

‘Shaking hands with the Pope, and to be there with some of my own family – it’s just once in a lifetime, it will never happen to me again.’

Since last August, the icon, which was designed by iconographer Mihai Cucu, has been brought from parish to parish across Ireland to help parishes prepare for the WMF.