Off-script comments that bridged great divide

OFF-THE-CUFF remarks are rare enough in diplomatic speeches. Diplomacy is usually a meticulously choreographed performance, consisting of gestures that might be subject to various interpretations, all innocuous. That’s what made a certain moment during Pope Francis’s speech at Dublin Castle yesterday so unusual and also so telling.

It was when the Pope, referring to the child abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, departed from his prepared speech and mentioned something that had happened an hour earlier at Áras an Uachtaráin.

‘I cannot fail to acknowledge the grave scandal caused in Ireland by the abuse of young people by members of the Church charged with responsibility for their protection and education,’ Pope Francis said, in accordance with his script.

Then he added, off the cuff and rather hesitantly: ‘My heart… the words of the Minister for Children are still in my heart and are still echoing in my heart. Thank you for your words.’

Earlier outside Áras an Uachtaráin, Minister Katherine Zappone had spoken with Pope Francis for a few intense moments off-microphone.

Judging by what he told the audience at Dublin Castle, the Pope really listened to her, and what he heard really struck home.

It was a telling moment because, while this entire Papal visit is bound to consist of symbols and emblems and the usual insipid stuff of which diplomacy is made, it was a reminder that some of these gestures actually mean something.

It matters that the Pope is listening – and certainly to people affected by clerical child abuse that matters a great deal. And it also matters who he is listening to. It’s headway.

The last time a Pope visited Ireland, Jack Lynch was Taoiseach and there were no women in cabinet. This time, the new face of the Catholic Church listened to and took to heart the words of a cabinet minister, who is not only a woman but one who had to take to the courts to have her Canadian same-sex marriage recognised under Irish law.

Then there was the performance of the Taoiseach himself, Leo Varadkar, the gay son of an immigrant, who is widely agreed by detractors and well-wishers alike to be modern Ireland on legs. Yesterday, Mr Varadkar was obliged to walk a diplomatic tightrope, extending a cordial welcome to the Bishop of Rome, while also unequivocally putting across the public grievance on institutional abuse. It was some feat, and yet he managed it. In the most carefully scripted terms, he was able to manifest the new Ireland without alienating the old.

There’s no doubt but that thousands of people are very happy about the Pope’s visit, and thousands of others are furious about it, and the two groups seem irreconcilably divided. But gestures and symbols such as we saw yesterday might help to build, if not a bridge, then a little walkway between them.