Pope Francis: Headlines on papal visits to Ireland show how country has changed

Pope Francis's visit culminated in an open-air Sunday Mass in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, where pilgrims’s attendance was a fraction of the million people who greeted Pope John Paul II at the same spot in 1979.

Almost 40 years separated the visits of Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis to Ireland, and the contrasts between the tone of the two events are thrown into sharp focus even just from a glance at the headlines covering each event at the time.

If the theme of the first papal visit was a celebration, then the tone for the second visit was more akin to seeking forgiveness.