When the pope is given a cool, even combative, welcome in the Republic of Ireland, the Roman Catholic Church is in trouble. The country had been – from its founding as the Irish Free State in the early 1920s after a violent break with the United Kingdom – deeply influenced by Catholic teaching in the framing of its laws and the management of its institutions. It is now solidly secular – and it has a list of hard questions to put to the Church. When Pope John Paul II visited Ireland in 1979, over 1 million people gathered to see him in Dublin’s Phoenix Park alone.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lloyd-ireland-commentary/commentary-how-to-save-the-catholic-church-idUSKCN1LG2IN
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lloyd-ireland-commentary/commentary-how-to-save-the-catholic-church-idUSKCN1LG2IN
