3 days that made Irish history

And that was a good thing. A million souls becoming testy in a downpour would not have been a pretty sight.
As it was, the crowd was busily occupied watching the sky for the first sign of the papal plane. Many had radios jammed against their ears. A goodly portion of the throng was on the move, eyes still to the heavens even while seeking out the nearest portable bathrooms.
It was Sept. 29, 1979. Dublin’s Phoenix Park. The pope was on his way. Finally.
The sense of anticipation in that crowd was quite extraordinary. Electric didn’t do it justice. It was bordering on atomic.
The fact that no pope had managed to place the shoes of the fisherman on Irish soil in the 1,947 years of the papacy was in large part responsible for this positive tension.
But there was also a separate and very keen anticipation over what this new, charismatic pontiff was going to say beyond the prescribed words and formal prayers of the mass.
What, for example, would John Paul say about the North, which was suffering through a particularly violent spasm.
Only a few weeks had passed since Lord Mountbatten had been blown to pieces and 18 British soldiers had been killed by the IRA in Warrenpoint, Co. Down.
How would the pope face up to, or face down, the IRA, the loyalists?
As usual, and this being Ireland, there was only the thinnest of lines separating religion and politics. John Paul would have to walk right down the middle of it.
The visit of the pope to Ireland was going to have profound effects one way or the other. Even for those not particularly religious in outlook, or whose religious persuasion was other than Roman Catholic, this was going to be a day to remember.
It would be so even for those who went to work in near empty offices, or who spent half the day waiting for a bus because everything with wheels was being used to get people to an from the park that was home to the president, the American ambassador, a herd of deer and, for a couple of precious hours, an ecclesiastical shepherd who looked like Santa Claus minus the beard.
For those who were religious, for those who would give time in a day to pray for the “pope’s intentions,” this was the day when the abstract would take on a novel, stark, plain reality.
Popes, for all their worthiness, had always been distant, almost ethereal figures, invisible behind the walls and columns of the far-away Vatican.
Air travel had allowed a select, and, by 1979, growing number of Irish people to visit Rome. A glimpse of a figure in white at a window was now a distinct possibility. The lucky and privileged might even get an audience.
Most Irish, however, still knew the pope from images on TV, photos, or medals with an engraved image.
Pius IX — pontiff from 1846 to 1878 and the vicar of Rome who had excommunicated the Fenians — had been the first pope to be photographed.
Pius XII had well understood the value of film only to be betrayed by it. His death-bed agony had been filmed and sold to the press by his doctor.
John XXIII had caught the television wave and Paul VI had left the Vatican to speak to the cameras in front of the United Nations General Assembly.
This pope, however, was going to be up close and personal. And on this Irish September day he would not be disappointed by the numbers waiting to reciprocate.
For those making the trek to the park, a generously sized green lung on the western edge of Dublin, the day began in the night. Arrival would not be random but strictly organized on a parish-by-parish basis.
Attendance at bus stops in the pre-dawn hours was mandatory. The city’s bus fleet had been primed. For one day it would be an armada. And it would depart and arrive on time.
The wide awake and the still sleepy piled on a for a journey that varied greatly in mileage but not one inch in purpose.
Special bus tickets were unrolled to mark the occasion. The entry points to the park were strictly delineated. Depending on where you came from, the day would be spent in specific, roped-off corrals on the great rolling stretch of the park dominated by a specially erected altar stage and towering papal cross, the latter being present at the site to this day.
The older folk in the multitude remembered the great Eucharistic Congress held in Dublin in 1932. But that had been opened by a mere papal legate, a cardinal named Lorenzo Lauri.
A lot of younger people hadn’t a clue what a Eucharistic congress was. This was already a changing Ireland. But there was something about this pope, this man.
The first John Paul had astonished the world with his broad smile, but he had died after only a few weeks.
This second John Paul? Well, it was something, the voice, the accent, his relative youth, the look on the face that said: I know a thing or two about this world, and the next one, and I’m ready to share it with you.
The moment of sharing, we all knew, would not be long once the Aer Lingus Boeing 747 was sighted. It had been specially flown to Rome to ferry the pope to Ireland — just in case Alitalia didn’t know the way, the unkind had suggested.
The plane’s size was exaggerated by the escorting Irish Aer Corps planes. They were like sparrows with an eagle.
From fist sighting of the plane the radio announcers called every minute. The pope had arrived at Dublin Airport; he was on his way to the Phoenix Park in his motorcade; he was so many miles from the park.
And then he was in it. A man in a million in the middle of a million.
John Paul’s popemobile drove through the roped-off avenues of grass between the packed corrals. People were delirious with excitement, applauding, cheering, waving, crying.
And the man hadn’t even said a work yet.
Then he did speak. And the crowd, fervent, saintly, agnostic, and skeptical, was his. “Totus Tuus,” as the banners proclaimed.
John Paul would not tarry in the park. Later that day he would travel to a field outside Drogheda and beg the IRA, on his knees, to forsake violence.
Over the next couple of days he would preach and pray in Limerick, Galway and Knock in County Mayo.
He would inhale the Irish air, walk on its sward and draw in the island’s people with his smile and crinkled eyes.
The man would, for all time, be a part of Irish history. And that is no mean thing.