Voters in Dublin celebrate the result of the Irish abortion referendum. Credit: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
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When Pope Benedict XVI landed in Scotland at the start of his visit to the UK in 2010, members of his entourage on board the papal plane were jittery. There had been protests about Benedict’s visit in the run-up to his arrival, from people angered by the cost to the taxpayer and by the Catholic Church’s track record on abuse. But as his motorcade swept into Edinburgh en route to meet the Queen at Holyrood, there was a sigh of relief. People were out in force on the route into the capital city, not protesting but waving.
On Saturday Pope Francis will also arrive by plane, this time in Ireland, for a whirlwind trip to what was once one of the Catholic Church’s greatest strongholds in Europe. If Vatican officials were a trifle nervous about secular Britain’s welcome to a Pope, they must surely be quaking now. For once-Catholic Ireland has been transformed in the past 40 years, embracing divorce, contraception, same-sex marriage, and most recently reform to allow limited legalisation of abortion.
It was once very different. When John Paul II visited Ireland in 1979, more than half the population came out to greet him. The churches were packed. Seminaries boomed; Ireland still had so many priests that they were a major export to both the developing world and to the far smaller Catholic community in Britain.
That has changed: in 1979, 93% of the population identified as Catholic, but by 2016, according to the census, that figure was just 78%. Two surveys, one in 2006 and one in 2012, found just 35% attend Mass weekly.
As the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin said, when details of Pope Francis’ visit were first announced, the trip is happening “as the Church in Ireland struggles to find a new place in Irish society and culture – a very different one from the dominant one it held in the past”.
Part of that culture change is due to the scandals that have beset the Catholic Church in Ireland in recent years and their heavy shadows hang over Pope Francis’ visit. There has been revelation after revelation that tested so many people’s faith: of terrible cruelty to vulnerable women in the Magdalene laundries, sent there because they became pregnant out of wedlock; forced adoptions of children of unmarried mothers; the scandal of sexual abuse of children by priests and its consequent cover-ups.
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