For a period of 48 hours in 1979, the Papal visit to Ireland of Pope John Paul II brought the country to a near standstill. Now, nearly 40 years later, it looks like Pope Francis could well be paying a visit to the country in 2018.
The head of the Catholic Church is has announced that Dublin will host the next World Meeting of Families, an event taking place every three years that honours the role of familial bond and faith. The gathering, created by Pope John Paul II in 1994, is considered a high-profile congress for Catholics around the world, and typically sees the serving Pontiff attend.
Despite the strong history of Catholicism in Ireland, the only papal visit to the country to date took place in 1979, and saw hundreds of thousands of pilgrims attending mass services celebrated by Pope John Paul II in Dublin, Knock, Limerick, Drogheda, and Galway.
An estimated 1.25 million people witnessed the Pope’s sermon in the Phoenix Park, and Papal fever took over the country, at a time when the Irish population numbered 3.4 million people.
Take a look through the gallery below to see some images of the Pope John Paul II’s visit to Ireland in 1979:
