Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

On behalf of the Progressive Democrats, I wish to join with the Taoiseach in his tribute to Pope John Paul II. I want to reflect for one moment on the breadth of his vision and his personal experience. As a young man, his mother died and he was left in the guardianship of his father and was dedicated to Our Lady in a particular personal way. He became a loyal son of the church in Poland at a time when that country was going through a mortal crisis. He saw his country invaded by the two great forces of totalitarianism at the time. He saw it being dismembered and must have seen all about him the naked evil of what can go wrong when people lose their moral compass and lose all contact with the higher things in life and the values by which we all hope to live. He saw terrible cruelty all around him. He must have felt despair for his country, of which he was so proud, as it was dismembered in front of his eyes.

Notwithstanding that, he became a priest in the Catholic Church. He stayed with his church in circumstances where it was the subject of huge oppression for many years. The wonderful thing about his life is that he showed eventually that by sticking to what he believed in, and by mobilising other people to follow his example, the power of ordinary people's convictions and sense of what is right and wrong could endure one tyranny and overthrow a second tyranny.

As the Taoiseach said, he was an enthusiast for the creation of a Europe which is free from war. Not only that, his great project was that Europe should be a Continent in pursuit of the ideals by which he himself lived. Not everyone agreed with everything he said, but that is not the point. Everyone was struck by the fact that he constantly stood by his own personal beliefs.

As the Taoiseach noted, in a world in which some people have come to view greed and the absence of values as the hallmarks of our time, the Pope showed a completely different side to humanity in the past few years. The reaction of the world to his passing and the way in which he faced his final illness underlines the strength of human spirit against all forms of adversity.

He came to this country in 1979, one year into his pontificate. He performed an act of humility on his arrival to a country by kneeling down and kissing the soil to demonstrate to the people his sense of their dignity and pride in their land. He went on his knees for a second time in Drogheda to plead with the Irish people and anybody tempted to resort to violence to abandon violence and take the path of peace. He pointed out that while they might claim to be in pursuit of justice, he too sought justice but that violence was always subversive and destructive. We have all recently had the opportunity to reflect on these words. They have never been so true and everybody in this House would hold the view that this message, ignored for more than a quarter of a century, still speaks to us today.

On behalf of the Progressive Democrats, I join the Taoiseach in paying tribute to this wonderful human being and the strength of his spirit. Everybody in this House will endorse the thought: Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam uasal.

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