Courtney McGrailProtestants urged to embrace papal visit
Paul Keenan and Greg Daly
A visit by Pope Francis to the North would be a major moment of healing divisions, it has been claimed.
It is widely expected that the Pontiff will visit the region during his 2018 trip to Ireland to symbolically complete the 1979 pilgrimage that St John Paul II was unable to make due to the violence there.
A senior figure in the Protestant community has also urged his co-religionists to embrace the visit as part of a way to overcome lingering anti-Catholicism.
Dr John Dunlop, a former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, told The Irish Catholic “I hope that he’ll be welcomed warmly, and that it will help to get rid of some of the toxic anti-Catholicism that lies inside this society”.
While Pope Francis is expected in Ireland primarily for the Dublin World Meeting of Families in August 2018, a visit North of the border is widely regarded as being a key part of the trip.
Primate of All-Ireland Archbishop Eamon Martin said that he hoped that “the visit will be greeted with welcome and a generosity of spirit”.
He said a visit by the Pope “will be a wonderful occasion”, but he stressed, “it’s not just the visit of a celebrity. He comes with a tough message”. Referencing topics of particular concern to the Pontiff, such as protection for the unborn and migration, Dr Martin said “the message of Pope Francis is a challenging one”.
Bishop John McAreavey of Dromore, meanwhile, told this newspaper that, just as the visit of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II to the Republic in 2011 “was very good for the island of Ireland”, a papal visit “would be good for our community and others if he could come and also be welcomed with respect – it would be healing”.
Bishop McAreavey welcomed Dr Dunlop’s comments and expressed confidence that such a welcome would be extended, if not from all, then “the broad swathe of the unionist community”.
“We are emerging slowly and painfully from a conflict…we are not yet a reconciled society,” Dr McAreavey said. “However, if Pope Francis can contribute to that reconciliation, or healing, it would be a great thing…It would be a genuine sign of progress if he visits, that we’ve made headway.”
Dr Dunlop expressed the hope that all people would see in the Pope “joy, compassion and care for the poor”.
“We have all this bitterness which we have inherited from the past,” Dr Dunlop said, adding that the Pope will “bring something of importance into Northern Ireland”.
Archbishop Eamon also said he is “hopeful the time is right for a visit by the Holy Father to Northern Ireland and confident his visit would be welcomed by people of all traditions and none.
“His message speaks to all human beings,” the Primate insisted. “It would be a great symbolic visit, a completion of those great symbolic visits, of Her Majesty the Queen to the Republic, of President Higgins to England, that affirm peace-making on the ground.”