St. John Paul II speaks about Ireland, in English!

Here's an intriguing and delightful little clip that popped up on my YouTube feed. St. John Paul II, on board a plane about to land in Ireland, says that he prays for Ireland every day, and that it's been near to his heart since he was a boy. He also teases the journalist a little. His personal charm and warmth is very evident. We also learn what he had for breakfast that day. The answer will STUN you! (Well, not really, but it's interesting all the same.)

I was in that million-strong crowd for the Papal Mass in the Phoenix Park. I was still a little bit short of my second birthday so I don't remember it at all. But apparently I was a Pope fan, and had a white Lego vehicle that I dubbed the Popemobile.

I can best describe my upbringing as solidly Catholic but rather casually so. My parents were firm Catholics and loyal to all the social teachings, but my father very rarely went to Mass. He did, however, always bring me into the Pro-Cathedral, as it was then, to light a candle whenever we were in the city centre. My mother brought me to Sunday Mass, which I hated, but we didn't go every week by any means-- it was more intermittent. 

My father was very much from a left-wing republican and trade-unionist background. As he grew older, he became more outspokenly Catholic on social issues. But I think that was more a result of the increasing secularisation of Irish society, and the increasing anti-religiosity of the Irish left, than any change in him. (The Irish Labour Party were once famously described as the political wing of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. But that's a long time ago.)

I had long stopped going to Mass by my teens and I can't remember anyone ever saying a word about this. (I actually felt more awkward when I started going to Mass as an adult, though nobody said anything about that, either.) Nobody ever taught me to pray and the rosary was never said in our home. There were no holy pictures or holy statues. I wasn't baptised until I was three yeas old, when I was batch-baptised with my brother and cousins.

I went to an Irish language school which was one of the relatively few non-Catholic schools at that time. My parents had helped to get it set up, which was a considerable battle. (Be it understood, their battle was to have an Irish-language school in the area, not a secular school.) The fact that it was non-denominational was rather academic, however. All the religious instruction was Catholic, and we were prepared for sacraments there.

I'm actually rather grateful my parents were not very insistent about practicing the faith. Being something of a contrarian, it might have made me rebel against it. 

I didn't intend that digression. Anyway, here's the clip, which I'd never seen before. Apologies if it's old hat to anyone else.