Joe’s Catholic Show

Saint Muredach’s Cathedral, Ready for its Close-up with President Biden. Photo from RTE One Ireland.

President Biden did a very good impression of Pope Francis this week.  He left the pressures of home and went to a country that was totally excited to see him, Ireland.  He went to celebrate twenty-five years of life under the Good Friday Peace Agreement and, like all the forty-two million Americans who claim some Irish ancestry, visited with his Irish relations.  In Biden’s case they go back three generations, much like my own roots.

I have had a home in Ireland for thirty years.  I got it with the proceeds from a serious car accident I was in.  Spent it all there and never looked back.  My home is in a village on the outskirts of Ballina, the largest town in the largest county (Mayo) in Ireland.   I had more What’s App calls and text messages this week, than ever before.   Just about everyone I know in Ireland (and Scotland) touched base to let me know firsthand, how exciting it all was.  The attention to Ballina from around the world was a supersonic burst of adrenaline.  And when it was all over, and Biden flew out from Knock Airport, the goodwill President Biden left behind is priceless. 

President Biden wrapped himself in his Catholicism.  He made a pilgrimage to Our Lady’s Shrine at Knock.  I make many every year (The Feast is My Birthday and Our Lady of Knock means a lot to me). Cameras recorded President Biden’s time there and told of how he was reunited with the priest who gave his son, Beau Biden, Last Rites.  Then President Biden went even bigger.  He gave his major speech on a stage in front of the very impressive Saint Muredach’s Cathedral in Ballina.  In the afternoon he was in Ballina, a double rainbow crossed the sky directly over the Cathedral.  When it was time for his speech, President Biden walked on to the magnificent stage alone.  No introduction.  No one with him.  Just a Joe Show, heart to heart with the Irish people, thousands of them there to see him. 

In the early evening before President Joe Biden gave his speech in Ballina, a double rainbow. Photo from RTE One Ireland.

Many of my Irish friends and neighbors were there.  And when it was over, they were all impressed.  I never got so many pictures on my phone.   I did not hear one bad word from anyone.  The Irish people are not a bunch of leprechauns.  The literacy rate in Ireland is 99.6%, higher than here.  I have learned, you can’t put one over on them.  They listened to President Biden and applauded him loudly and sincerely.  It’s an experience many there will never forget. 

There was not much press coverage in the U.S.  Just episodes of reporters trying to get him to talk about the geek who stole Pentagon secrets.  The Irish people were not interested in that.  They were interested in Joe Biden.  What he was like.   Many were impressed with his vigorous stage entrance and the fact that he used no notes, no prompter.  He just talked to the people there.  Yes, his Catholic faith, his personal Catholic faith, was there in most of what he did on his personal day in Mayo.  And for the Irish, that was his business.  No judgments.  And that is the way it was.  Period.  Thank God.