Pope will be most relaxed among capital’s marginalised
ON THE afternoon of Saturday, August 25, Pope Francis and his entourage will descend on the small, spartan dining hall of the Capuchin Day Centre for the Homeless in inner city Dublin.
Greeting him will be an octogenarian friar in a brown habit, with a ready smile. Brother Kevin Crowley is a follower of St Francis, the great Church reformer and champion of the poor who died in 1226. A saint whom the Argentinian Pope so admires that he chose to be named in his honour.
Papal watchers know that it is here, among Dublin’s marginalised, the Pope will be most relaxed. This is the pontiff who eschewed the trappings of the papal court to live in a simple hostel in the Vatican and at the outset of his pontificate announced, “How I long for a poor Church for the poor!”
The Capuchins on Bow Street recently established a designated ‘Family Area’ in their dining hall to allow homeless families to enjoy a nutritious meal together in safety. Living in one room in a hotel with no facilities to cook is a major challenge. With his Italian roots, Francis knows the importance of families being able to take time to sit together over good food.
This Capuchin facility is a prime example of how the Church can, in a practical way, help address some of the needs of those disadvantaged families that the State is failing. It is this type of practical challenge to family life that the World Meeting of Families aims to highlight.
While Francis may charm the Government and President Michael D Higgins at Dublin Castle and Áras an Uachtaráin, if he is going to have of cup of maté, the traditional South American drink, it will be in Bow Street with Brother Kevin.
The other venue Pope Francis is likely to be happiest about visiting is Knock Shrine in Co Mayo. As a great devotee to Our Lady and St Joseph, the apparition of the Holy Family there in 1879 ticks all the devotional boxes for him and chimes with the theme of the World Meeting of Families.
Here, he will meet the plain people of Ireland. Those whom the Celtic Tiger left behind but who still had the generosity to stump up over €14m to refurbish Knock Shrine and its Apparition Chapel in a short few years. It is that indomitable spirit and loyalty to the faith that Monsignor James Horan tapped into when he spearheaded the building of Knock Airport.
But the people of the Archdiocese of Tuam, in which Knock is located, have also experienced the shock and shame of the revelations around the Bons Secours mother and baby home. Their journey in confronting past secrets and abuses is emblematic of Irish Catholicism’s journey in recent years.
Knock Shrine draws up to one-and-a-half million visitors annually. People’s reasons for making the pilgrimage are varied and often personal. Undoubtedly, the apparition is a major factor, but pilgrims are also drawn by the simplicity of the 15 men, women and children, aged five to 75, who witnessed something inexplicable on that evening of August 21, 1879 in lashing rain.
Who could not be moved by the story of John Curry? Though a witness to something heavenly, that did not prevent him from having to emigrate to the US to find work as a labourer. He never had a home there and couldn’t afford to marry and ended up buried in a pauper’s unmarked grave, until his remains were transferred to a New York cathedral last year. This is no tale about the princes of the Church.
Knock’s popularity is a paradox in 21st-century Ireland. The shrine has up to 12 residential chaplains, mostly retired priests over 75 years of age, who hear confessions.
These are needed because figures show that, on average during the pilgrimage season, up to 4,000 people a week go to confession in Knock – certainly something that would please Pope Francis, who has championed a return to a sacrament which has fallen out of favour with many Catholics.
Pope Francis’s choice of venues is as interesting for what it shows us about the leader of global Catholicism, as it is for what it tells us about the paradoxes of Irish Catholicism today.