Phoenix Park: The young - so beloved of the Pope - paid him their respects yesterday, reports Joe Humphreys
It is as though he had planned it.
The Pope died and people returned to the churches in their droves to hear what else but the story of "doubting Thomas".
No more fitting a gospel for a country undergoing a crisis of faith. Almost 26 years ago, Pope John Paul II visited a very different Ireland, a more trusting place, which greeted him like a pop star.
Where yesterday were the young people to whom he then pledged his love?
Some were in the pub. Some went shopping. But many crept back to church - if only for the day.
"I was watching it on TV and felt I had to come," said Fiona Ward (29), from Mullingar, who described herself as an irregular Massgoer. "He was a part of our lives. I didn't necessarily agree with him, but I respect what he believed."
Her friend, Luigi Pacini (30), who joined her at St Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin, added: "He did the best he could. He tried. He was the first Pope to admit he was fallible."
Inside the church, people queued to sign a book of condolences, their messages reflecting a nation mourning so many different popes: the divine figure, the closest thing to God on Earth; the teacher and spiritual leader uniting more than one billion Catholics across the globe; the human being who courageously battled against Parkinson's Disease; but, perhaps above all, the father-figure with whom people did not always see eye-to-eye but in whose passing they suddenly felt love.
The messages read as follows:
"In you I saw Christ."
"Our saint is gone."
"To the most inspirational figure in my lifetime, may you rest in peace . . . "
"Safe home!"
"I thank God for the gift of John Paul."
Weekly communicants were not surprised to see the increased attendance at Mass. "His death will bring people back to the church, at least in the short term," said Linda Byrne, from Celbridge, Co Kildare.
"I think people recognise he was genuine in what he believed in, and had much pain over what is happening in the church, particularly the child sex abuse."
The scene was repeated in Catholic churches across Ireland.
Followers of other faiths, with whom the Pope had worked in a spirit of reconciliation, also said prayers for him, while a minute's silence was observed at GAA grounds.
Memories of the Pope's visit to Ireland were fresh in people's minds, nowhere more so than at the Papal Cross in the Phoenix Park, which had become a resting place for flowers and candles from mourners since Saturday night.
Michael Quigley travelled to the cross from Shankill with his wife and their daughter to recall an event which was special to both his family and his faith. His father, Aidan, an Aer Lingus pilot, had the honour of flying the Pope out of Ireland from Shannon to Boston.
"It was a wonderful occasion," said Ann Quigley. "That line 'Young people of Ireland - I love you'. For someone to say that in those days was so warming and trendy. He was cool. He is some act to follow."
But was he a good Pope for the church?
"He was conservative," she replied.
"He was consistent," her husband remarked. "He did not do things to make people like him." However, he added: "Wonderful and all as he was, the church from that time has been in decline in terms of the numbers going to Mass. Maybe there is something there for the new man?"
Opinions differed on what sort of successor would be best.
"Maybe a younger Pope," said David Maughan (33), from Cabra. "Someone who is a little bit more liberal, more with the times."
All agreed, however, that whoever gets the job faces an uphill struggle.
While the Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Rev Diarmuid Martin, spoke in the Pro-Cathedral of the Pope's concern for "faith in Ireland", a busy trade was evident in the Ann Summers sex shop around the corner on Dublin's O'Connell Street.
Back at the Papal Cross, Julianne O'Brien, from Mulhuddart, laid a bouquet of flowers at the altar near which she had sat - aged just 10 months - in 1979. "I felt I had to come and pay my respects. He was a good man."
Despite her grief, however, she could not see herself rekindling the faith of her youth.
"I don't see the next Pope being any different," she said. "Will he be allowed to be different? I don't think so."