Reagan, the Pope and a dream photo on Rock of Cashel
New book reveals ambitious plans ahead of US presidential election
A SENIOR White House aide hatched a plan to get Pope John Paul II to travel to Ireland to say Mass at the Rock of Cashel during former president Ronald Reagan’s visit to the country in 1984.
Overtures were made by the then US and Irish ambassadors to the Vatican in an attempt to bring the Pope and President Reagan, who had both recently survived assassination attempts, at the iconic site. But the grand plan for the historic Mass – the brainchild of Mr Reagan’s flamboyant Deputy Chief of Staff Mike Deaver – was scuppered after the message was relayed back that the Pope wasn’t prepared to travel to Co. Tipperary to say mass for the US president.
Details of the attempts to combine a US presidential and Papal visit to Ireland have emerged for the first time in a new book, The Green and White House, by journalist Lynne Kelleher, which explores the unique position of influence and shared history Ireland has held at the heart of power in the world’s most powerful country.
In the book, former Irish ambassador to the US and secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Séan Donlon, reveals how he flew across Ireland in Black Hawk helicopters with Mike Deaver trawling
Pope wasn’t going to travel to Co. Tipperary
for sites ahead of President Reagan’s visit to the country in June 1984. According to Donlon, Deaver wanted to create the perfect photographic backdrops for the IrishAmerican electorate ahead of the upcoming presidential election.
He was responsible for iconic photo opportunities that captured Reagan on top of the Great Wall of China and filling sandbags to show concern after a flood in Louisiana. During his reconnaissance tour, Deaver scouted sites in Kenmare, Limerick, Connemara and Dublin.
On the road to Reagan’s ancestral village in Ballyporeen, Co. Tipperary, Deaver came up with one of his most ambitious plans when he set eyes on the Rock of Cashel, the majestic medieval cathedral where St Patrick is said to have converted the King of Munster.
Donlon said: ‘Deaver felt it would be a great idea if we could get the Pope to say Mass at the Rock of Cashel.’
The Irish diplomat admitted ‘it had never occurred to me that during a visit by the American president, we would also deal with a visit by the Pope’. But Deaver was struck by the symbolism of the Pope saying Mass for his boss.
However, his plans of a Papal mass for the US president on Irish soil were dashed when the Vatican confirmed the Pope, who visited Ireland in 1979, would not be making the trip to Cashel. The Green and White House details how presidents
from JFK and Reagan through to Obama and Biden have explored their family roots in Ireland. The book also reveals a
link between the families of War of Independence hero Michael Collins and President John F Kennedy in West Cork.
Local historian Tim Crowley says JFK’s grandmother and Michael Collins’ father were neighbours – and may even have been related.
Crowley says: ‘At the very least they were neighbours, and there is a possibility they were related. There is a record of Johnny Collins, Michael’s brother, and he reckons that the first Collins to come into Woodfield, several generations before Michael Collins, actually married into a Sheehy farm. So, there is a possibility that Kennedy and Collins are distant cousins.’
The author Lynne Kelleher, who writes for a variety of national publications including the Irish Mail on Sunday, said her research examined ‘diaries, diplomatic papers, speeches, and first-hand accounts to get an insight into how nearly two dozen Irish American presidents felt about their ancestral homeland’.