Pope Francis will be greeted by large and enthusiastic crowds when he visits Dublin to attend the 2018 World Meeting of Families (WMOF). The papal Mass in the city’s Phoenix Park, which concludes the event, is expected to be well attended, and the Pope himself remains popular in a country that has been rapidly moving away from its traditional Catholic identity. It’s a rare opportunity for the embattled Irish Church to have a good news story.
But that opportunity has turned out to be a serious challenge. Irish Catholicism has been so weakened by sexual scandals that holding an event in Ireland to celebrate the Church’s teaching on the family was always going to be difficult. There will be demonstrations, prominent speakers have pulled out, and the WMOF risks being either overshadowed by scandals around the world, or else highlighting the Church’s internal divisions.
