In March 2013 we published an article on the site looking at the Papal Cross in the Phoenix Park. For the week that is in it I have revisited this subject, and this is an expanded piece on the subject. The original comments are included below.
Irish Independent map, September 1979.
Yellow and white pontifical flags are flying on the main streets. Bright coats of green paint have been slapped on hundreds of buildings and “Brits Out” and other graffiti have been scrubbed from thousands of walls. At Phoenix Park in Dublin a 200‐foot steel cross, bleachers and vast roped enclosures await a crowd of a million for an outdoor mass Sunday afternoon.
So wrote The New York Times days before Pope John Paul II arrived in Ireland in 1979. American readers were told that “no Pope has come to Ireland before, and John Paul’s visit is viewed here as a kind of papal blessing on Irish nationhood.” Never mind New York, perhaps the truest observation came from The Spectator on the neighbouring island, proclaiming that “Ireland in its history has been more loyal to Rome than Rome has been to Ireland.”
When it was all over, they made their way home from the Phoenix Park in their hundreds of thousands, still streaming out of the park six hours after the conclusion of mass. The Irish Independent correctly proclaimed that it all “proved the most major feat of organisation in the history of the state.”
Little remains to be said or written about that Papal visit of 1979. The lasting legacy, of course, is the Papal Cross monument in the Phoenix Park, which will be central to this weeks visit by Pope Francis. The story of its construction and placement in the Phoenix Park is the stuff of legend, with the structure turned around in mere weeks. The visit saw something in the region of a million people crowd into the park, with six thousand people in the choir alone. The Papal Cross was the work of Scott Tallon Walkers Architects, and cost an incredible £50,000. It was constructed in the Inchicore steelworks factory of J and C McGloughlin, and the structure weighed in at 31 tons. It, in many ways, was the main symbol of the event, attracting international media attention and designed to capture the magnitude of the occasion.
Writing about the cross in 2004, architect Ronnie Tallon gave some idea of how quickly the project was completed, noting that:
At the beginning of August 1979, I received a call from the Archbishop of Dublin appointing our practice to design and build an outdoor event for the celebration of Mass for one million people. He had just received confirmation that the Pope was coming to Ireland in eight weeks’ time.
The arrival of the cross in the Phoenix Park, Irish Independent.
The sheer scale of the event is clear from all the small details of the day. The Papal carpet alone was two acres in size, and was delivered to Dublin upon three lorries, each carrying thirty rolls. The carpet was made in Antrim, the home county of the Rev. Ian Paisley, something which the media didn’t fail to comment on. Ian Paisley outlined his “total opposition” to any attempt by the Pope to visit the north, and in the end Dundalk was as far north as he went.
Tallon recalled that “we decided that we required a cross the height of Nelson’s Pillar, which was 125 feet high, which would be clearly visible to all from the furthest reaches of the vast congregation and which would give a sense of focus to the occasion.” Tallon was afterwards awarded a Papal knighthood for his efforts in designing the cross and altar for the historic event. According to Tallon, “normally if you were doing a steel contract it would take six weeks to get the material in and another twelve weeks on top of that to have it fabricated and erected.”
Evening Herald, 1979.
The cross arrived at the park on 7 September, and took a rather unusual route, beginning its journey in Inchicore but heading into the city and crossing the O’Connell Bridge. The sheer size of the structure meant that this longer journey was required, as shorter routes would not accommodate the cross. It took two hundred-ton cranes to lift the cross into position. Was Tallon ultimately satisfied with his Papal Cross? He would tell a journalist that “I’m never happy with anything I’ve made and if I was I’d retire. It’s one of the difficulties of any creative society. You aim at perfection, which is impossible to achieve.”
It didn’t all go according to plan for Tallon and his team. It was reported on 13 September that attempts to raise the cross into position were delayed by “winds gusting up to 50 knots”, and that “the high winds have ruled out any attempt to hoist the cross into position.”
A visiting English journalist, writing for The Spectator, was struck by the atmosphere in the Phoenix Park on the day of the visit, writing that:
For thousands of People at the back of the big gathering the most they could see was a tiny white figure on the distant altar. That was all they could glimpse, and that was enough. It is hard to think of any cause or person, not even the monarchy, not even a football match, which would unite people in Britain in this way, but then we have never had to wait 1500 years for anyone.
When the visit passed, the question of the future of the Papal Cross opened up almost immediately. Recently released state papers show that the Catholic Church sought £100,000 from the state for ownership of the cross, claiming it was owed this money from costs incurred by the visit. Charles Haughey believed the site of the Papal Cross needed to become an attraction in itself, when he wrote to minister of state Sylvie Barrett that “effort should be made to make it attractive, even inspirational. I think we should go for an abundance of trees of all kinds and create a pleasant setting in which visitors coming to see the cross can relax.”
A year after going up, the base was daubed with a huge scrawl, proclaiming that “if men got pregnant, contraception and abortion would be Sacraments.” The slogan, rather than being quickly painted over and forgotten about, appeared in most Irish newspapers in the following days, though nobody was ever prosecuted. Calls for its removal were, to be frank, few and far between.
The Irish Times, 1980.
Kevin Myers was one of few voices to condemn the structure in the media, albeit later, attacking it in a 1990 column for The Irish Times, where he asked “does An Taisce not have an attitude to this defacement of a public place by a cross which is a monument to vulgar triumphalism?” The “ghastly monstrosity”, he believed, had no place over a decade on from the visit.
I agree with the magnificent Buildings of Ireland database, which describes the cross by saying it is “a considerable feat of engineering, rather than a piece of sculpture. Marking an significant moment in history, it is of considerable social and religious importance.” More curious is the small plaque on the runway of Dublin Airport, where the Pope first touched Irish soil, something only a select few Dublin Airport workers will ever see. Half a million people will gather at the monument later this week, proving the church still has considerable influence – or perhaps saying more about the pulling power of Pope Francis. For historians, there will be real interest in what he says – Just as John Paul II focused on the issues of the day in Ireland in terms of the spiraling violence in Ulster – how will Francis deal with the legacy issues facing the church?
Original Comments on March 2013 piece:
Póló: I remember well the euphoria of the time. It was like the second coming. Sadly it actually presaged an era of spiritual repression which is not over yet.
FXR: I remember that day. I had a few things to do in town. I walked home from there through a ghost town. It felt like I was the only person in Dublin not up in the Park. In 2009 I photographed Kevin Flanaghan burning a copy of the Ryan Report after midnight mass (starts at 10pm?) outside the Pro Cathedral on a freezing Xmas eve. Then we drove up to the Phoenix Park and dumped copies of the Ryan Report around the base.
The monstrosity should be taken down with a few pounds of explosives or a team with angle grinders. It’s a monument to a nation of forelock tugging peasants who kow tow before the Vatican. We haven’t moved that far since then either: Bertie& Co are still enjoying the fruits of his loyalty to the Church and the victims have been buried like the carcasses of dead mongrels. The Indemnity Deal is still proving an armour plated defence of Vatican assets and no cardinals, bishops or Nuns are in prison for their crimes.
innaminna: I would like it removed. I walk there very often and I resent the fact that it is there in such a prominent place that it is impossible to avoid it. I think the time has come to remove it to some churchyard somewhere and they can commemorate the visit with a plaque. But at present it is forcing all people who walk in the 15 acres to have Christianity invade one’s thoughts. Walking in parks etc can be a personal, and often rare opportunity for reflection on one’s own private world. It is one thing to share that with other people or animals, but to have it invaded in such a manner by a religious symbol that is so loaded, is really not on. If I wanted to go to a church I would. And while we’re at it, I would like all religious statues etc to be removed from public land, the angelus removed from RTE and basically all religion removed from public life. Religion is private, I have no problem with it as long as it stays that way.