REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A RECEPTION TO MARK THE CANONISATION OF BLESSED CHARLES
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A RECEPTION TO MARK THE CANONISATION OF BLESSED CHARLES OF MOUNT ARGUS, VILLA SPADA, ROME
Tá an-áthas orm bheith i bhur measc tráthnóna ar an ócáid stairiúil seo. Go raibh maith agaibh as an fáilte a thug sibh dom.
Your Eminence, Ministers, Archbishops, Excellencies, friends,
This is a special day for the Passionist order, for Dublin and for Ireland. Like that other great Irish Saint, St. Patrick, Saint Charles was an emigrant to our shores and it was his ministry to the people of Ireland that revealed his exceptional holiness and set him on that rare road to sainthood. We share the joy of the canonisation of Saint Charles of Mount Argus with his Dutch homeland. He wasn’t the first Dutchman, it has to be said, to make a name for himself in Ireland and though they both have papal support in common, his famous seventeenth century countryman William of Orange has achieved the status of saviour in some quarters if not quite sainthood.
So we gather in the beautiful and magnificently restored Villa Spada, a place with a distinguished place in Italian history, a place that is an elegant showcase of contemporary Ireland but a place too that has over centuries been closer to Ireland than you might imagine.
Originally, the Villa Spada had gardens which ran right up to the wall of the church of San Pietro in Montorio, former home to Fr Luke Wadding before he founded St Isidore’s the place that was to become the resting place of Hugh O’Neill, his son and the young O’Donnell princes who left Ireland during the Flight of the Earls exactly 400 years ago. There is an anonymous poem in Irish, datable to 1650, in which a visitor to the church of San Pietro in Montorio weeps at the graves of the Irish princes and has a sudden vision of a young woman, a maiden who laments the state of Ireland:
“By what justice is Erin cast down?
Why are her groans unheeded?
Why are not the Gaels exalted,
A people who at all times obeyed God
Since the advent of Holy Patrick?”
The poem ends like this “May consolation come to the maiden who last night stood at O’Neill’s grave/with anguished heart…Deep is my love for her and for those of whom she spoke.”
We who “love that maiden and those of whom she spoke” have plenty to console us today for we are a fortunate and a blessed generation. We are the first ever to experience the confluence of peace, prosperity and partnership, the first to know our country as a place of opportunity for our people and for the many migrants to our shores. They come speaking many languages. They come from a variety of faith traditions. They come to an Ireland at last sorting out the scandalous sectarian mess of many centuries. They come to a problem-solving Ireland, confident and hope-filled.
Under the gaze of our new saint, St Charles of Mount Argus, himself an emigrant, we have the chance to build a truly remarkable homeland. These past few months have seen many historic days. They have been exciting, moving and inspiring but for me one of the loveliest such days occurred in my home parish, in Cootehall, County Roscommon when our late and very much loved parish priest was honoured with a sculpture commissioned in his memory by Protestant and Catholic neighbours alike. The simple monument shows three figures carrying three books - they represent the great Abrahamic faiths, Islam, Judaism and Christianity. It shows the lion lying down contentedly with the lamb. It represents the emerging Ireland – the place of partnership in diversity, of respectful curiosity and dialogue across differing perspectives, of a many-stranded and strong civic society, fair, humanly decent and inclusive.
Is it a coincidence that in this year of the canonisation of one “Irish” Dutchman the memory of that other more divisive Dutchman was so powerfully healed by a recent meeting at the Boyne between An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and First Minister Ian Paisley? Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. Either way all of us who love Ireland as he did have much to celebrate this Sunday and much to look forward to in the happier years ahead.
I think Saint Charles of Mount Argus whose name I first heard as a child in Holy Cross Ardoyne, a place he knew well, would be in his humble way more thrilled by the triumph of peace, the triumph of love than even by this day dedicated to his memory. He would see and rightly in these times the sheer majestic power of the commandment to love one another.
Our thanks to Philip and Ana for hosting this reception in these handsome surroundings and on this unique occasion.
Gurb fada buan sibh’s go raibh míle maith agaibh.