HERE’S HIS SCHEDULE at a glance:
The Pope will attend Knock Shrine tomorrow morning and will arrive for mass at Dublin’s Phoenix Park at 2.30pm tomorrow afternoon.
And here’s the detail:
10.30am Pope Francis will arrive at Dublin Airport, to be greeted by members of the clergy and representatives of Government before leaving by car to head to the Áras.
11.15am Pope to be greeted at Áras an Uachtaráin by President Michael
D Higgins and his wife Sabina. After signing the visitors’ book, Pope Francis and President Higgins will have a private meeting, after which they will go to the garden where the pope will plant a tree.
12:10am Meeting with the Taoiseach, diplomats and others at a Dublin Castle reception. Leo Varadkar will meet with the pontiff for about 15 minutes. Speaking this week he said that his first words to the pope would be words of welcome but that he also wanted to talk about an array of issues ranging from human rights to child abuse.
The pope will make his first public speech of the visit at this event.
3.30pm Visit to St Mary’s Pro Cathedral (Marlborough Street, close to O’Connell Street). Pope Francis will meet with recently-married couples, and couples preparing for marriage.
4.15pm The pope will parade through Dublin city centre on his Popemobile. Gardaí expect up to 100,000 people to turn out, with Assistant Commissioner Pat Leahy saying this week attendees will get “within two or three metres” of the pontiff.
The route includes O’Connell Street, Westmoreland Street and Dame Street.
Capuchin Day Centre Pope Francis is scheduled to meet people from the homeless community at the Capuchin Day Centre in Smithfield in the late afternoon.
Saturday evening – Croke Park The pope is due to address the faithful in Croke Park as part of the Festival of Families, the main concert event of the Catholic Church’s World Meeting of Families, which has been taking place at the RDS in recent days following its opening on Tuesday night.
Ticket-holders will start arriving at 4pm and the pope is due to join the audience of some 82,500 in the stadium later where he will hear five testimonies by families from Ireland, Canada, Iraq, and Africa.
Musical headliners include Andrea Bocelli, Daniel O’Donnell, the Riverdance troupe and Nathan Carter.
9.20am Pope Francis will arrive at Ireland West (Knock) Airport in Mayo, to be greeted by a delegation of clergy and other local representatives. 100 local schoolchildren will also welcome the pope to Mayo.
9.45am The pope to arrive at Knock Shrine, the site where 15 villagers who gathered at the gable end of the parish church on 21 August 1879 said that they had witnessed an apparition of the Virgin Mary and other holy figures.
Pope Francis will travel through the crowd of an expected 45,000 people in the Popemobile, before paying a private visit to the Apparition Chapel, delivering a short address and leading the Angelus Prayer. There will be an open-air Mass at Knock after the pope departs, led by parish priest Fr Richard Gibbons.
2.30pm The pope arrives for the Phoenix Park Mass. First attendees are expected at the site early in the morning, and there will be recorded and live entertainment around the staging area from 8am. Here’s the plan for the Mass:
Entertainment will continue in the Phoenix Park after the Mass, organisers say. Some 500,000 people are expected to attend.
6.30pm Farewell ceremony at Dublin Airport, attended by Church and State representatives.
The pope is expected to meet survivors of clerical abuse at some stage during his two-day visit. Details of that meeting are not being announced until after it has taken place, the Vatican has said.
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