Eucharistic Congress - Diminished Church set to celebrate

It may just be too late to relax the licensing laws to allow pubs stay open longer to allow next week’s Eucharistic Congress be celebrated with a peculiar Irish gusto — as was done at the last congress held in Ireland 80 years ago.

It is certainly too late for Taoiseach Enda Kenny to dissolve the Dáil to try to ensure political stability during the event. Yet that was one of the reasons Mr Kenny’s predecessor, in party and in office, William T Cosgrave, dissolved the Dáil at the end of Jan 1932.

It is more than unlikely too that Mr Kenny and Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore will act as canopy bearers for papal nuncio Archbishop Charles John Brown as then taoiseach Éamon de Valera, his cabinet colleague and later president, Seán T O’Kelly, and opposition leader WT Cosgrave did for Cardinal Lauri, the papal legate who presided over the 1932 congress, and Cardinal MacRory, the Archbishop of Armagh.