Why did Pope John Paul II visit Ireland? The 1979 papal visit in context

Pope John Paul II’s visit to Ireland in 1979 was an iconic moment in the history of twentieth-century Irish Catholicism. It has, however, received little detailed historical scrutiny. Based on state archival and hitherto unavailable diocesan material, this article contextualizes the visit by explaining the pastoral and leadership challenges that confronted the Irish hierarchy. Second, this article discusses how close the pope came to visiting Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. This was of concern not just to the hierarchy but to the Irish and British governments. Third, the organization of the visit, which was closely tied to the pastoral concerns of the Irish bishops, is surveyed. Lastly, the pastoral impact of the visit is considered. If the Catholic hierarchy hoped that the papal visit might arrest the declining institutional influence of the Catholic Church, reverse a quiet but growing faith crisis, or hasten a cessation of violence in Northern Ireland, then those expectations were misplaced. Ultimately, the pastoral impulse of the 1979 papal visit to Ireland was to preserve rather than renew the Irish Catholic tradition at a time when Irish Catholics were fixed on future material advancement rather than fidelity to their spiritual past.

Catholic marriages and family politics: the Vaux children vs. Sir Thomas Tresham

The recusant brothers-in-law William, third Baron Vaux of Harrowden (1535-95) and Sir Thomas Tresham (1543-1605), are best-known as exemplars of stalwart Catholicism and for their claims of fidelity to queen and country. They rose to prominence for their connection to the Jesuit proto-martyr Edmund Campion in 1581, and Vaux’s daughters Anne and Eleanor are celebrated — or notorious — for their support of the Jesuit Henry Garnet and suspected complicity in the Gunpowder Plot. Tresham’s sister Mary married Vaux, and the two men enjoyed a close friendship. Vaux leant heavily on Tresham for counsel, and the families have thus been absorbed into arguments for a closed Catholic community who drew closer together amid persecution. Yet these families were also divided, not by religio-political matters of great weight, but by more earthly causes of family unhappiness: youthful disobedience, scandalous marriage, and money. Through a close analysis of three linked episodes of family strife, this article looks beyond the singular fact of their confessional identity to argue that, like their Protestant counterparts, Catholics were not immune to acrimony. Disruptions to family unity could heap further tribulation on Catholics, and shared confessional identity might not be sufficient to repair bonds once severed.

Scandal in Somers town: conspiracism and Catholic schools in early Victorian England

The middle years of the nineteenth century are notable in the history of Catholicism in England for the development of the ‘papal aggression’ crisis. Catholic emancipation had been met with suspicion by Protestant groups and this suspicion grew into violent antipathy with the publication by Nicholas Wiseman of ‘Ex Porta Flaminia.’ At the same time that this crisis was emerging, Catholic charitable organizations were also attempting to garner support from the state for the building of Catholic schools. With a boom in the poor, urban population, fuelled by the arrival of Irish refugees, this assistance was urgently required. In the midst of this a small school in the heart of London became the focus of a cause célèbre. The belief that this school had been funded by lucre, defrauded from dying and vulnerable members of the Somers Town community by simonist priests, provided the source of a widespread conspiracy theory. The result of this conspiracy theory was a lawsuit, brought in 1851 by the relatives of a deceased benefactor of the school, against the newly enthroned Cardinal Wiseman. Metairie vs. Wiseman became one of the most celebrated and cited cases of the early Victorian era.

Disputes in the Irish college, Douai (1594–1614)

By the late sixteenth century, Irish demand for seminary places was sufficient to warrant the establishment of a dedicated Irish college in Lisbon (1590). This was followed by foundations in Salamanca (1592), Douai (1594) and elsewhere. The great majority were administered by the Society of Jesus, whose Irish members were generally Old English, a term denoting descendants of the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman settlers. Old English Jesuit domination of Irish colleges occasioned accusations of discrimination against students of Gaelic family backgrounds, with the students seeking redress from the secular authorities. The Irish college in Douai was not formally administered by the Jesuits, but its founder, Christopher Cusack, collaborated closely with the Society. Accusations against him of anti-Gaelic bias emerged in the 1600s, coincidental with the arrival of large numbers of Gaelic Irish refugees in Flanders at the end of the Nine Years War (1594–1603). Ethnic tensions and financial difficulties all but put paid to the college in the 1620s.

Abbot Edmund Ford, secret agent

Hugh Edmund Ford (1851–1930), first abbot of the English Benedictine monastery at Downside in Somerset, had a reputation, especially in monastic circles, as a scholarly and reforming monk. He is much less well known than his contemporary confrères, Cardinal Aidan Gasquet and Abbot Cuthbert Butler, lacking Gasquet’s public profile and Butler’s list of much-respected publications. Ford’s considerable political and diplomatic skills were honed in the promotion of a monastic reform movement which transformed the English Benedictine Congregation. He travelled widely on monastic business and also on account of his always delicate health. More surprisingly, in 1918, he acted as an agent for the British government on a mission to neutral Switzerland, where the Benedictine abbey of Einsiedeln provided a refuge for many Germans displaced from Rome when Italy entered the Great War in 1915. Ford made use of the various ecclesiastical networks available to him,including the Benedictine Confederation centred on S. Anselmo in Rome and connections made through the school at Downside. This article places Ford in these and other Catholic networks and demonstrates how they were put to use in the Allied cause during the First World War.