Michael KellyEditor Michael Kelly reflects on the ‘sometimes complex, relationship between Ireland and the Holy See’.
As revealed by this newspaper last month, Ireland’s new embassy to the Vatican will be situated just a stone’s throw from St Peter’s Basilica on the prestigious Via della Conciliazione, the boulevard that leads from the city of Rome to Vatican City.
There’s no need to rehearse the farcical episode of Ireland closing the Holy See embassy in 2011 on the specious pretext of saving money only to announce the re-opening some two years later.
Since her appointment as Ireland’s diplomat at the Vatican, Ambassador Emma Madigan has embraced the role with gusto and, by all accounts, has been extremely well received and has done much to mend fences.
The anniversary of a little-marked historical event this week got me thinking about the long relationship between Ireland and the Holy See. We often say that 1929 marked the beginning of diplomatic relations between Ireland and the Holy See. But there’s a curious clue in the address of the first ambassador Charles Bewley to Pope Pius XI that reveals the history goes back a lot farther. Ambassador Bewley reminded the Pontiff that his arrival marker the “re-establishment” of relations between the Holy See and Ireland.
The first Papal Nuncio to Ireland, Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, arrived in 1645 to help the Irish Confederate Catholics in their war against English Protestant rule.
This week marks the 435th anniversary of 1580 Massacre of Smerwick. It has been described by historians as the most notorious incidents of butchery during the colonisation period of early modern Irish history.
During the Second Desmond Rebellion, a 400–500 strong force of Papal soldiers captured the town from the English but were forced to retreat to nearby Dún an Óir where they eventually surrendered and most of them were then massacred on the orders of the English commander, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Arthur Grey.
Pope Gregory XIII had sent a force of several hundred Italian and Spanish troops as an expeditionary force under the command of James FitzMaurice FitzGerald, this force was quickly surrounded.
After a three-day siege, the commander di San Giuseppe surrendered on 10 November 1580, Grey ordered the massacre of the Papal forces, sparing only the commanders.
Evidently, the few that were spared suffered a worse fate. They were offered life if they would renounce their Catholic faith; on refusal their arms and legs were broken in three places by an ironsmith. They were reportedly left in agony for a day and night and then hanged.
It’s a grisly tale that illustrates just one episode in the long, sometimes complex, relationship between Ireland and the Holy See.
The depth of that relationship, and Irish Catholicism’s sad history of persecution, has led at least one historian to observe that even when the name of Ireland couldn’t be spoken at home, it could be spoken in Rome.