Pope snubbing the North would be another own goal by Church

THE worst kept secret in the world is out of the bag: it’s been confirmed that Pope Francis is coming to Ireland in August. Truth be told, while the Vatican likes to keep such things under wraps until official, the free-wheeling pontiff has been telling everyone he meets for almost three years that he’s Dublin-bound for the World Meeting of Families.

It’ll be the first visit of a pope to Ireland since St John Paul II’s visit in 1979, which makes Francis’s trip historic. John Paul’s visit itself was historic since no pope had set foot on Irish soil before that Slavic giant of a man raced down the steps of Aer Lingus’s flagship plane St Patrick and kissed the ground at Dublin Airport. We immediately fell in love.

The 1979 visit was remarkable – close to half the population of the island (2.7 million people) turned out. The Mass at Phoenix Park, attended by more than a million people, was such a logistical spectacle that the organisers gifted the blueprints to the United Nations for use in the construction of refugee camps where huge numbers of people had to be accommodated in limited space at short notice.

By any objective measure, the visit was an enormous success, not withstanding the later revelations of hypocrisy of two of the frontmen Bishop Eamon Casey and Fr Michael Cleary. The pope’s trip to Ireland left its mark on the universal Church: Irish officials can also take credit for the creation of the so-called ‘Popemobile’ used to move the pontiff around – it was later adopted across the world for the globetrotting Polish pope.

Of course, the huge disappointment of 1979 was that John Paul II was unable to cross the Border due to a upsurge in violence at the time. It was unfinished business he acutely felt. I met him in 2003, deaf in one ear, his face enveloped in a Parkinsonian mask.

I was introduced to him as being from Ireland. When he discovered I was from the North, his eyes lit up as he exclaimed: “I have to finish my visit. I couldn’t cross the Border, but there’s peace now, thank God.” It wasn’t to be, he died 18 months later.

John Paul wasn’t the only one who was disappointed. Northern Catholics were gutted. They understood the risks such a visit would’ve posed – both to the pontiff and themselves, and they understood why it couldn’t happen at the time: loyalist paramilitaries had vowed an attack and Ian Paisley had mobilised his hardline supporters. But, there was huge disappointment.

The pope knew this and that’s why he pleaded at Drogheda, the closest he came to the North, “let history record that at a difficult moment in the experience of the people of Ireland, the bishop of Rome set foot in your land, that he was with you and prayed with you for peace and reconciliation, for the victory of justice and love over hatred and violence”. That victory over violence took almost another 20 years to be realised in the Good Friday Agreement.

But, despite the absence of the Executive, the North is a place transformed. So much so that DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson felt bold enough last year to say that he was looking forward to Pope Francis coming to the North.

So far, the schedule is unclear. The main act for Francis is the World Meeting of Families in Dublin. There have been murmurings about a visit to the Marian shrine at Knock, Co Mayo, but a potential visit north of the Border is still up in the air.

The Vatican and Irish-based organisers of the papal trip are playing with fire. The lack of a visit to Northern Ireland would be a huge disappointment to northern Catholics. It would also be a missed opportunity in terms of reconciliation. Following the remarkable visit to the Republic by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and the reciprocal trip across the Irish Sea by President Michael D Higgins, a papal trip to the North would be the icing on the cake.

It would demonstrate powerfully to Catholics that a region where they once faced institutional discrimination because of their faith had matured sufficiently to welcome a visit from their spiritual head.

It is understandable that organisers of the Dublin-based event that has precipitated Francis’s visit would be anxious that engagements north of the Border would not detract from that event, but the absence of a visit to the North would display a remarkable tone deafness. Relatively speaking, the Church, judged by metrics like Mass attendance and parish engagement, is in a much healthier state in the North than in the Republic.

How that would survive what could be interpreted only as a papal snub would be anyone’s guess.

But, the smart money would be on bewilderment from a community that has often felt itself beleaguered that the head of their Church – the man they pray for by name at Mass every Sunday – couldn’t manage a 10-minute chopper ride to Armagh.

The Church in Ireland has scored enough own goals to last a lifetime. The absence of a large papal event in the North would be unforgivable for many members of the faithful.

Jeffrey Donaldson felt bold enough to say he was looking forward to the Pope coming