Dublin (EFE) end to conflict.
“You make me proud,” he told the thousands of people who gathered in front of Ballina Cathedral, in County Mayo (west), to hear his last speech of this four-day tour, the longest by a president. from USA to this country.
Family is “the beginning, the middle and the end, that’s the way the Irish are,” Biden said, pointing to the distant cousins who still live in that town, from which his great-great-grandfather Edward Blewitt immigrated to the United States in the mid-19th century. to flee the Great Irish Famine (1845-1849).
“But I don’t think he ever imagined that his great-great-grandson would return 200 years later as president of the United States of America.
It’s really incredible, ”said Biden, who will leave after midnight this Friday from Dublin to Delaware (USA).
Thus he put an end to a visit that has had two clearly differentiated phases.
The Democratic president’s tour was brief and cold in Northern Ireland, which received him on Tuesday with tight security measures due to the rise in the terrorist threat and the indifference of Protestant and pro-British unionists, who consider him, due to his Catholic background, Closer to Dublin than London.
The fragile peace in Ulster
During the scant 15 hours he was in Belfast, Biden had coffee with the British Prime Minister, the Conservative Rishi Sunak, in a meeting of about 30 minutes and gave a speech on the new Ulster University campus to defend the process. for peace and urge local politicians to resolve their differences.
This climate of tension prevented him from visiting Stormont Castle, the seat of the Northern Irish Autonomous Assembly and whose power-sharing government has been suspended for more than a year due to the rejection of the arrangements by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the second force. of Brexit for the province.
Although his calls for understanding were “moderate”, DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson acknowledged, he was viciously criticized by hard-wingers, including his former chief minister Arlene Foster, who said he “hates the UK”.
Biden, however, changed his face as soon as he crossed the invisible border that separates the north and south of the island, and already in the Republic he began to spread smiles, mingle with his “countrymen” and insist on his Irish roots.
“Smiling Joe”, as he was dubbed by the local press, “had come home” and Dublin rolled out the red carpet for him.
In the Irish capital, he met with the Irish President, Michael D. Higgins, and the Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, with whom he discussed bilateral issues and the close relationship between the two countries, without leaving aside the birthday of the peace process and your current crisis.
For this reason, Biden, in a historic intervention on Thursday in the Dublin Parliament, meeting in joint session, once again asked the United Kingdom and Ireland to strengthen their cooperation.
He urged them to collaborate to get the DUP to agree to form a government with the nationalist Sinn Féin, the first northern Irish force, thus acknowledging that relations between the two countries have deteriorated in recent years due to Brexit.
The president himself has been very critical of the management of the exit from the European Union (EU) carried out by the British Executive, especially during the periods of Boris Johnson and Lizz Truss.
Biden cries remembering his deceased son
But the strong emotions for Biden, 80, came on the last day of the tour in County Mayo (west), where he had events scheduled today to reunite with his relatives and delve into his roots.
What the president did not expect was to coincide at a stop on the itinerary at the Shrine of Our Lady of Knock with the priest who imparted the last rites to his son Beau Biden, who died of cancer in 2015.
That “spontaneous” meeting brought the president to tears, according to local parish priest Richard Gibbons, who acted as his guide and later recounted that the chaplain who cared for Beau in his last moments, Frank O’Grady, now works at the sanctuary.
“He told me about his family, about his connection to his faith and also about his son. And suddenly, spontaneously, we realized that we have the chaplain who administered the last rites to his son in the United States working here, ”Gibbons told the BBC.
The priest described the event as “extraordinary”, since he acknowledged that he had no knowledge of it “until the president arrived”, who had the opportunity after greeting all the religious, including O’Grady.
“He laughed, he cried, as if everything came back to him. She could see how deeply she felt it and what she meant to him. It’s been an extraordinary afternoon, I won’t forget it,” added Gibbons.