Two popes helped put Eastern Europe on the long road to freedom

NORMALLY anyone using the National Archives is looking for specific information, but when the State Papers are released to journalists each year, it is a different matter. Most do not know what they are looking for; they just plough through the files looking for anything of likely interest.

Files released for 2010 covered the 1979 visit of Pope John Paul II, so I took a chance to look at a file covering the Irish embassy at the Vatican.

The first news that the embassy had of the Pope’s intended visit to Ireland was when Fr Dermot Martin, who now happens to be the Archbishop of Dublin, telephoned to enquire if the embassy had any further information about the Papal visit. When the secretary at the embassy said that they knew nothing at all about it, Fr Martin said that he had been told that the cardinal and the ambassador were to have been informed the previous Saturday.