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Fri 10 Oct 2009A papal visit would have more impact this time
OUR REMEMBERING of the September 1979 visit of Pope John Paul II has comprised part nostalgia and part self-satisfaction, the nostalgia being less for the pope than for the feeling of innocence nowadays associated with those times, writes JOHN WATERS
The anniversary analysis went something like this: the pope, personable but representing an outmoded form of thinking, came to Ireland at approximately the moment when we began to wake up. After he left, the church fell apart, and Irish society “matured into new understandings.
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