Meeting the priest who gave the last rights to his son Beau had “seemed like a sign”, US President Joe Biden told an estimated crowd of 27,000 people gathered in Ballina, during the most personal speech of his trip to Ireland.
After an emotional day when he met Fr Frank O’Grady in Knock, President Biden said he and his family members had not known that the former military chaplain would be there. “It was incredible see him. It seems like a sign,” he told the large crowd who had waited for hours for his address outside St Muredach’s Cathedral, a symbolic venue for him.
Pointing out that his great great great grandfather Edward Blewitt had, before he emigrated to the US, provided 27,000 bricks used in the pillars holding up the roof of the building, he stressed the importance of family to him. He said his father had always told him: “Family is the beginning, the middle and end. That’s the Irish of it”.
To cheers he said that his ancestor had never imagined that his great great great grandson would return 200 years later “as President of the United States of America”.
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Mr Biden’s final words to the people of Ballina drew one of the biggest cheers of the evening when he declared “Mayo for Sam”.
Referring to the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement he said Irish people always carried hope in their hearts. The Agreement, he said, had shown what was possible when people work together in common cause.
Decisions made today would have an impact for decades to come, he added.
“We are facing enormous challenges around the world, challenges that are too great for any one country to solve alone.
“Together we must take on these challenges of disease, food insecurity which continue to devastate communities around the world just as they did in Ireland generations ago,” Mr Biden said.
Condemning the “brutal war of aggression that shattered peace in Ukraine and Europe”, he said freedom and democracy must always be defended.
He also thanked the Irish people for opening their hearts and homes to tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees.
Earlier, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar described Mr Biden as the most Irish of all American presidents “not because of what was written in your family tree but what is enshrined in your soul”.
Introducing Mr Biden he added:
“We did not need to gather here today in our tens of thousands to say welcome back to Ireland because in your heart you never left.”
