Brenda Power: Forget Garth Brooks - Ireland's ready, willing and papal for superstar Francis (2024)

A few years ago I found a pair of old jade earrings in a junk shop. They seemed to be rough nuggets of the stone in a thin gold frame, but on closer inspection it turned out they were intricately carved with the face of Tutankhamun.

The jewellery dated from the 1920s, when the discovery of the gorgeous Boy King’s tomb — only later did it emerge he was goofy and chinless — set Victorian ladies’ corsets in a twist. At a time when global heartthrobs were in short supply, King Tut enjoyed a brief spell as a pin-up, and there was a craze for jewellery and knick-knacks featuring his image. Today, there’d be T-shirts, phone cases, mugs and schoolbags, and we’d call it merchandising.

This rather tragic fandom for a long-dead teenager was mirrored, in my own experience, by a fleeting crush on a most unlikely icon. Pope John Paul II didn’t exactly rival the Bay City Rollers as a poster boy for me and my teenage schoolmates before he visited Ireland in September 1979, but that changed after we saw him play live in Galway. The experience itself was memorably wretched, involving endless train journeys, dead-of-night marches to Ballybrit, and cold and hunger and crowds, but the proximity to an international superstar had a most unexpected effect.

For weeks afterwards, girls boasted of how close they’d been to the man himself, and brought all sorts of papal souvenirs to school to show them off. I still recall being jealous of one pal’s
full-colour calendar of the Pope in different poses, a dead ringer for the
Ed Sheeran version that hangs on my 14-year-old’s wall today.

We’re a more secular and cynical bunch these days, and the chances of herding thousands of obedient schoolchildren into corrals to ensure a good turnout at a papal mass are pretty remote. The fact that the Pope is doing just two appearances, on his overnight here in August, will certainly maximise the audiences for each event. However, if that objective explains the brevity of the Pope’s visit — only the second to this traditionally faithful country in the history of Christianity — the organisers may find they have erred on the side of pessimism.

Pope Francis is just as charismatic as Pope John Paul II, and develops a genuine rapport with ordinary folk on a brief meeting. He’s good with kids, clued-in on social media, and has a smile that transforms his normally lugubrious features.

The Catholic Church in Ireland enjoys a much shakier status than it did almost 40 years ago, before the abuse scandals decimated mass attendance and before it crossed anyone’s mind to question the misogyny of an institution that, up to the 1960s, was “churching” new mothers, purging them of the “sin” of childbirth before they could return to the sacraments.

We’ve arguably far deeper historic reasons to hold a grudge against Queen Elizabeth II, and yet she had the country eating out of her hand when she visited here in 2011. The majority of Irish
people still identify as Catholics, albeit semi-detached, and realise that any pope’s capacity to reform an institution of such magnitude, however well-intentioned he might be, is limited. And he is the Pope, after all — one of the world’s most recognisable celebrities in an era when fame alone is its own justification; no “claim” required.

Since Francis can ham it up for the crowds and the cameras like a minor Kardashian, there’s every chance he’ll charm our corsets into a twist.

So don’t be surprised if a Garth Brooks-type fever swamps Pope Francis’s impending visit, where folk who couldn’t pick him out of a police line-up will be clamouring for tickets and even celeb-obsessed teens get the bug.

Time, perhaps, to invest in some merchandise.

Killer clause in inheritance law

Catherine Nevin will continue to protest her innocence from beyond the grave. The “Black Widow” was in the course of fighting her late husband’s siblings over his will when she died last month.

Nevin was using intriguing grounds to challenge the Succession Act prohibition on a murderer benefiting from their crime. She insists — the case continues in her unavoidable absence — that being convicted by a jury is not “conclusive” proof of guilt sufficient to deny her an inheritance. Or sufficient to deny an inheritance to a “significantly disabled” friend to whom Nevin left her own estate.

If ever a case called for the wisdom and ingenuity of Solomon, this is certainly one.

Harry and Meghan escape the slums for Dublin

Royal lovebirds Prince Harry and Meghan Markle took time out from their wedding preparations to visit Northern Ireland on Friday.

They left their home in London, the 41st-best city in the world for quality of life, according to a global survey, and flew to Belfast, which languishes in 68th place. Shortly after their May wedding, the pair are planning a long weekend in Dublin. As it happens, Dublin scored higher than any UK city on that survey, coming in 34th.

Who’d have thought the royal family, in their London HQ, were slumming it by comparison with our quality of life? Here’s their chance, then, to see how the other half lives.

RTE bias case is age-old problem

After she won her case for age discrimination against RTE, broadcaster Valerie Cox revealed she was dropped from It Says in the Papers “because they wanted younger people”. But at least one of the current presenters, Deirdre “So What Else?” Purcell has a few years on her, which only goes to prove there was no reason to drop the excellent Cox. And there was nothing in the RTE staff handbook that stopped casual contractors of 65-plus from working.

The compulsory retirement age in the public sector is to be raised to 70. That’s a welcome move, especially as a recent UK study showed short-term brain function declines 40% faster in retirees.

However, the new limit is not going to make it any easier for a sixtysomething to compete with a thirtysomething for a job in broadcasting. If anything, now that employers can point to the revised age limits to dismiss any accusations of ageism, it may make the reality harder to challenge.

Paddy’s day theft hard to swallow

A “heavily disguised culprit” broke into Joe Watty’s pub, one of a handful on the island of Inis Mor, early on St Patrick’s Day, turned on all 15 beer taps and flooded the premises with €7,000 worth of beer. CCTV picked up footage of the saboteur, and the owner PJ Flaherty has suspicions as to their identity. The incident, said Flaherty, had shocked the island as “this kind of crime is unheard of in this area”. It’s unheard of in most areas, but in the spirit of those JCB and Lidl floats last weekend, it should make for a fascinating feature in Inis Mor’s parade next year.