REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY MCALEESE AT A CIVIC RECEPTION IN BOBBIO
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY MCALEESE AT A CIVIC RECEPTION IN BOBBIO WEDNESDAY, 21 MARCH, 2007
Mr. Mayor, distinguished guests,
What a moving experience it has been for Martin and me to make this visit to Bobbio. We thank you Mr. Mayor, and the people of Bobbio, for such a wonderful welcome.
To the Irish, Bobbio is much more than a beautiful little town in the north of Italy. It is a place that binds us to one another over centuries, a place of deep-rooted friendship and shared faith. Today, the young people of Italy and Ireland grow up in a common homeland that is the European Union, their lives and futures clearly entwined. They enjoy peace and prosperity unimaginable even fifty years ago. They have a common currency, a common future. The Union they belong to grew out of the misery of war and so, while its economic advantages are many, it is also an important instrument of human rights and human understanding, both among European nations and in the wider world. These are good times to visit Bobbio and to reconnect with the great name of Columbanus, for the Ireland he loved has blossomed into a prosperous, peaceful and egalitarian democracy that he would surely be immensely proud of.
From being a country which lost far too many of its young people through emigration, we now welcome many thousands of people every year to find employment and new opportunities among us. We have a small but very dynamic Italian community and they are very much at home in the Irish environment just as the small Irish community in Italy are completely at home here. The Irish and the Italians have a legendary love of life and are big investors in human relationships, in friendships, in sociability and in curiosity about the otherness of others.
The roots of the friendship and empathy between Ireland and Italy are very ancient ones, and here in Bobbio we find one of its most symbolic manifestations in the link with Columbanus.
As an island on the western edge of Europe, Ireland was spared much of the turmoil and the failure of institutions which afflicted the European mainland after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Classical learning was preserved in Irish monasteries to the extent that the Ireland of this period was romantically called the ‘island of saints and scholars’. Columbanus received his impressive classical education in the monastery of Bangor, quite near, incidentally, to where I was born. I think it speaks eloquently for Ireland’s sense of Europe at the time that Columbanus’ thoughts and actions turned so naturally to a European mission. He was one of the earliest of a long list of Irish people who left their mark on European society in that period.
In our modern world of instant communications it would be easy to underestimate the courage it took, even for a character as intrepid as Columbanus, to set out into a chaotic Europe with a few companions and armed only with the qualities he could carry in his heart or in his head - his intelligence, his faith, his strength of will and fearlessness.
His odyssey of faith involved him with what is now France, then Austria and, through a disciple, Switzerland. He finally came here to Bobbio. In each place he founded significant monasteries and left a legacy which radiated for many centuries afterwards, indeed in some respects down to our own day.
Like all the best saints, he was never afraid to speak truth to power. He did not hesitate to give even Popes the benefit of his unvarnished advice, adding in one letter, flatteringly for us Irish, ‘the native liberty of my race makes me speak frankly to you, for with us it is not the person, but reason which prevails’.
I think that here in Bobbio this great Irishman, at once poet, idealist, shrewd manager and saint, found his greatest fulfilment. Much in the accounts of his later life speaks for that.
I understand there was some talk at one time of formally making St Columbanus the patron saint of the European Union. He would indeed be an appropriate choice. His outlook and his whole career took Europe as his arena. He was one of the builders of our civilisation. You know better than most the major influence which his monastery in Bobbio exercised for much of the Middle Ages. But in a sense a formal designation as a patron saint of Europe is unimportant. He is that already, through his life’s work.
Those of us who work to realise the European ideal, and who are perhaps occasionally dismayed at the inevitable setbacks, can apply to ourselves the inspiring words which Columbanus wrote in one of his letters more than fourteen hundred years ago, ‘Without a struggle there is no crown, without liberty there is no dignity’. His words offer an inspiring motto for Europe today.
I am proud to join with the people of Bobbio today to honour the memory of a great Irish personality, a great European and to celebrate the links between Ireland and Italy of which Columbanus is such a noble symbol.
Thank you.