The papal visit: When I was young

Broadcaster Joe Duffy read a prayer of the faithful at the 1979 Papal visit and realised afterwards that he and the Pope had something in common.

Duffy said there was a great buzz at the Youth Mass in the Ballybrit Racecourse in Galway at the 1979 visit.

He was 20 years old at the time and was invited to say a prayer of the faithful on stage as president of the Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union.

“I think I was asked to do it because I had a working class accent and they wanted a bit of diversity,” says Duffy, originally from Ballyfermot in Co Dublin.

He was on stage with Pope John Paul II, Bishop Eamon Casey and Fr Michael Cleary.

“I discovered later that the Pope and I had something in common at the time – we were the only two on stage to not have any children.”

His favourite part of the 1979 visit was the night before at the marquee, singing and having a good time.

Almost 40 years later, Duffy will be covering the event for RTÉ.

“I will be fascinated to see the reaction because the church has changed so much since then…there is much more criticism nowadays, which is a good thing, of course.

“Personally, I think he should go to Tuam and say a prayer there with Catherine Corless… that would be an incredible gesture.”

Youth Mass 1979

Farmer and agri-business owner Paraic Dwyer left the house at 3am to attend the Youth Mass in 1979.

Young people in 1979 had few other events in their lives as big as the visit by John Paul II. East Galway man Paraic was 15 at the time and remembers the electric atmosphere and uproarious celebrations.

“We never had the chance to go to concerts or see rockstars. It was the biggest event of our lives so far, it didn’t really matter who was on that stage, we were just so excited,” says Paraic.

“We went off on a school bus at 3am and somebody brought some drink on the bus so most of us were drunk before we got there.

“We were in pens in a square with around 50 people in each one. We snuck out during it to get closer to the altar.”

Paraic doesn’t remember much about the mass itself, but recalls the whole place erupting after Pope John Paul said: “Young people of Ireland, I love you.”

“It felt like an all-Ireland final,” he recalls.

Every available garda in the country was pulled in for service at the 1979 papal visit, along with the army and civil defence.

Special Detective Unit

Retired detective Sergeant Edwin Handcock from the ballistics section in the Special Detective Unit had a critically important job in 1979.

“In my section, we had to check out the areas the Pope was going to be in before he went. We were looking for booby traps and explosives,” he says.

He used an explosive sniffer device to check for substances, but this proved to be a bit of a problem as well.

“The only technical problem we faced was with the sniffer. I had to test it beforehand and discovered it was reacting to a mid-brown shoe polish, which the Pope actually used at the time. So we had to re-programme the whole device and sort that out,” he says.

Another retired garda, who wished to remain anonymous, was stationed in the Louth-Meath division at the time.

He was working at the Drogheda mass on the post office security in the telephonic protection.

“There was great excitement at the time, it was a really great time in the area,” he says.

“There was a lot of pressure on it because it was so near the North.”

He says that the gardaí protected a tapestry at the back of the Pope’s chair when people were trying to take strands from it as a memento.

“It was the best system they could have had when the Pope couldn’t go to the North,” he says of the Pope going to Drogheda.

On duty

Jude Murphy is a retired detective garda who was part of the security task force special detective unit at Dublin Castle for the proceedings.

Murphy was on duty in the Phoenix Park, Drogheda and Clonmacnoise.

The German government loaned the Gardaí two police helicopters for the event, which were used for overhead vigilance.

The operation ran very smoothly and there were no issues, according to Murphy.

They were up in the helicopters looking down over Dublin, which Murphy described as a truly beautiful sight.