Pope Francis ‘will leave the North off visit’
Pope Francis would seem ideally suited to visiting a bitterly divided North, writes Paddy Agnew in Rome
DETAILS of Pope Francis’s visit to Ireland will finally be released tomorrow with few if any surprises in store.
The Holy See will confirm the schedule for this summer’s trip — with no sign of any amendments to include a visit to the North.
Arguably, the most significant item in the papal programme, at least from the secular viewpoint, will be the Missing Item, namely that oft-discussed papal visit to Northern Ireland.
This comes as no surprise. When Pope Francis officially confirmed the trip in a general audience in March, senior Vatican spokesman Greg Burke categorically told the Sunday Independent that there would be no “diversion” to the Six Counties.
The two main movers behind the visit — Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin in Dublin — have always been very cautious and circumspect about the possibility that he would include the North on his travels.
He will make a pastoral visit to the World Meeting of Families on August 25-26.
The visit — the first by a Pontiff since Pope John Paul’s Mass at Phoenix Park in 1979 — will include a series of events.
It includes a national opening, simultaneously in the 26 dioceses on August 21, followed by a three-day pastoral congress at the RDS, Dublin, on August 22-24.
However, most attention will focus on the weekend — the Festival of Families in Croke Park on Saturday, August 25, and the centrepiece of the visit — the closing Mass for the World Meeting of Families on the following day.
Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from around the world are expected to flock to the Phoenix Park.
The feeling remains, however, that this is an opportunity missed.
A couple of weeks ago, a Good Friday Agreement anniversary seminar in Rome was attended by Northern Irish religious leaders, Catholic and Protestant, as well as by other past and present “players”.
What emerged was an overwhelming sense that putting Northern Ireland on the schedule could prove crucial.
One speaker suggested that it would be “an iconic moment of unity”.
Others suggested that if the Pope did not go to the North, it would be “a tragedy”, “a mistake” in a politically stalled Northern Ireland where sectarian tensions are on the increase again.
The point is, of course, that despite the overwhelming secularist bent of the Irish people, as underlined by the recent referendum vote, Pope Francis remains an international leader of huge credibility.
A 55-country poll, published last December and carried out by the Worldwide Independent Network, showed that 70pc of Irish people questioned approve of Pope Francis.
In contrast, 82pc of the Irish gave US President Donald Trump an unfavourable rating.
NO last-minute surprises are expected tomorrow when the Holy See finally releases the details of Pope Francis’s programme for his two-day visit to Ireland at the end of August. Arguably, the most significant item in the Papal programme, at least from the secular viewpoint, will be the Missing Item, namely that oft-discussed papal visit to Northern Ireland.
This comes as no surprise given that when Pope Francis himself officially confirmed the trip in a general audience last March, senior Vatican spokesman Greg Burke immediately and categorically told the Sunday Independent that there would be no “diversion” to the North. Furthermore, the two main “movers” behind this visit, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery (department) for the Laity, Family and Life, and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin in Dublin, have always been very cautious and circumspect about the possibility that Pope Francis would travel North.
And yet, the sensation remains that this is an oppor- tunity missed. A couple of weeks ago, I was one of a small number of people who attended a Good Friday Agreement anniversary seminar in Rome. Jointly sponsored by both the Irish and the UK Embassies to the Holy See, this seminar was attended by Northern Irish religious leaders, both Catholic and Protestant, as well as by other past and present “players” in the Northern drama.
Chatham House rules re quotations and attributed comments applied to this seminar. Yet, what emerged from the gathering was the overwhelming sense that a visit to the North by Pope Francis could have been, could still be at some future date, desperately important. One speaker suggested that it would be “an iconic moment of unity”. Others suggested that if the Pope did not go to the North, it would be “a tragedy”, “an opportunity missed” and “a mistake” in a politically stalled Northern Ireland where sectarian tensions are on the increase.
The point is, of course, that despite the overwhelming secularist bent of the Irish people, as clearly underlined by the Abortion referendum vote, Pope Francis remains an international leader of huge credibility.
A 55-country poll, published last December and carried out by the Worldwide Independent Network, showed that 70pc of Irish respondents approve of Pope Francis. By comparison, 82pc of the Irish gave US President Donald Trump an unfavourable rating.
Then, too, there is the obvious consideration that when Pope Francis travels to areas marked by “religious” conflict, be it the Central African Republic or Jerusalem, be it Istanbul or Cairo, he never fails to deliver a message which denounces “attempts to justify every form of hatred in the name of religion...” (Cairo, April 2017).
If you have travelled with Francis to Jerusalem, Istanbul, Sarajevo and Tirana (as I have done), you very soon understand that the key moments in this Pope’s overseas trips are ones of inter-religious and ecumenical dialogue. Not for nothing, when Francis visited the Holy Land in May 2014, did he he do so accompanied by two old friends and collaborators from Buenos Aires, namely rabbi Abraham Skorka, a former rector of the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary in Buenos Aires, and Sheikh Omar Abboud, a former secretary-general of the Islamic Centre of Argentina.
I well record, too, the gasp of surprise that went up in the Jerusalem press centre during that trip when Francis risked prompting Israeli anger by stopping to pray at the eight-metre high “dividing wall” in Bethlehem, between Israel and Palestine. That gesture, clearly intended as a silent statement against a symbol of division and conflict, had been preceded by an appeal to both sides to end their “increasingly unacceptable” conflict.
That visit, too, ended with Francis extending an invitation to both the Palestinian and Israeli presidents, Mahmoud Abbas and Shimon Peres, to join him in Rome to meet and pray together for peace. The joint moment of prayer in the Vatican gardens some days later certainly did not resolve problems in the Middle East but it was still an unprecedented Papal intervention in the stalled peace process.
Then, too, there is a consideration voiced by several Vatican insiders in the last weeks. Namely, that from the time of Pope Benedict XIV, the Holy See has looked on the Northern Irish peace process as a welcome and positive example of Christians resolving their differences through their faith.
Professor Giovanni Vian, editor of the celebrated Vatican daily, L’Osservatore Romano, was just one of a number of commentators who told me that it was a pity that Francis would not be visiting the North. If ever there was a Pope who would seem ideally suited to visiting bitterly divided Northern Ireland, that Pope was Francis.
It is, of course, true that the Pope is not making an apostolic visit to Ireland. Rather, he is coming to preside over two days of the World Meeting of Families (WMF), a once every three years Catholic Church jamboree that has travelled around the world ever since the first such meeting in Rome in 1994. Since then, the WMF has been held in Brazil, the Philippines, Mexico and most recently in Philadelphia in 2015.
In some senses, the WMF is a bit like the World Cup. Russia likes to think that it is staging the World Cup finals tournament due to begin in Moscow on Thursday but in reality, of course, this if Fifa’s show, out on tour.
So, too, the World Meeting of Families is an event, not just for Ireland and Irish Catholics but for the universal Catholic church.
For that reason then, a trip to Northern Ireland, a visit which John Paul II was famously unable to make for security reasons in 1979, was always a doubtful starter.
Put simply, if Pope Francis were to go to the North, such a visit would become a huge “international” story which would wipe the World Meeting of Families completely off the news agenda.
From the church viewpoint, the WMF brings together (mainly Catholic) “families from across the world...to celebrate, pray and reflect together” as they face the manifold challenges of practising their faith in today’s world. Visiting international areas of conflict is a matter for another time and context.
All of this, of course, will not undermine the success of the Pope’s visit. Francis is a complex figure, not just the avuncular country priest with the gentle homely touch.
Rather, he is the first Pope whose priestly formation was forged in the white-hot furnace of the 10-million megalopolis of greater Buenos Aires, during a period of intense and bloody civil conflict.
His visit to Ireland for the WMF will be memorable because he is not afraid to face chronic social issues of the modern world, be it abortion, gay marriage, divorce, diverse forms of the family unit not to mention clerical sex abuse (witness his recent hard line with Chile’s bishops). His conservative Catholic teaching may be out of step with the Irish zeitgeist but that will not stop him trying to talk and teach.
The fact that a huge majority of the Irish electorate have twice in the last three years rejected fundamental tenets of Catholic Church teaching in referenda will not stop him attempting to start a dialogue. Ironically, that same capacity for dialogue might have been even more useful, north of the border.
‘Francis is a complex figure, not just the avuncular country priest with the gentle homely touch’