‘POPE SHOULD NOT VISIT,’ SAYS PRIEST
A LEADING member of an influential group representing over 1,000 Irish priests has said he doesn’t want Pope Francis to visit Ireland.
Speculation has been mounting that the Pope could soon be heading to here after it was announced that the next World Meeting of Families will take place in Dublin in 2018.
It would be the first papal visit to this country since John Paul II’s historic three-day tour in 1979, which was the first visit to Ireland by any pontiff.
But Fr Séamus Ahearne, a leading member of the Association of Catholic Priests, said he fears the build-up to a high-profile papal visit would distract from his group’s efforts to bring about reforms and changes in the Church.
Although he stressed he is a huge supporter of Pope Francis, the Finglas-based Augustinian cleric said he would be concerned that the logistics involved in organising the visit and the inevitable publicity surrounding the event would hamper moves to tackle escalating problems within the Church in Ireland, such as the vocations crisis.
He said: ‘I really don’t see any sense in it at all. We need to get on with the reform, never mind expensive showpieces like this. Maybe the bishops would love it to happen, but we really don’t need it. It would be a lot of flamboyance and candyfloss and a distraction from doing the things which we need to do. Also, the Pope is an old man, nearly 80, and on a personal level I really don’t think it’s fair to put him through a jamboree like this.’
The World Meeting of Families is an event which focuses on celebrating the Church’s role in building family and which takes place every three years.
The event was started by late Pope John Paul II in 1994 – and the Dublin conference in three years’ time will be the ninth. Observers believe it is likely Pope Francis will attend the Dublin event, given the relative geographic proximity of the Irish capital to Rome. The only two times a pontiff has not visited a past meeting were in the Philippines in 2003 and the 2009 event in Mexico.