Sir, - I was astonished at the tone of Fr. O'Hanlon's letter (April 8th) in which he claims that "everything possible was calculated in the President's trip to Rome for maximum slur and provocation against the Church and her visible head." If the President and her advisers were set on insulting the Church, why did she bother hosting a dinner in honour of Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Secretary of State of the Holy See?
Why did she go out of her way to visit four of the Irish religious communities in Rome on the final day of an already packed visit? We in Saint Isidore's College were honoured by her visit, but no doubt we will be dismissed as toadies.
It would seem that Fr. O'Hanlon's lifelong opposition to Mary Robinson has blinded him to the considerable effort the President made to include as many of the representatives of the Irish Church in a visit whose primary purpose was to address the World Food Programme. - Yours, etc.,
Collegio Sant Isidoro,
Via degli Artisti,
41 Roma.
PS. The "sprig of vegetation" to which Fr. O'Hanlon refers was the same mimosa which women all over Italy wore that day to mark International Women's Day. I seem to recall quite a number of clerics here in Rome wearing sprigs of green vegetation on Saint Patrick's Day. But I suppose that's OK because they were blessed first.