Rome Calls ⛪️🇻🇦

So, What’s the Craic?

The Craic returns on this crafty little Friday evening, bringing you whatever wee nuggets of news we could find from the Irish at home and abroad. If you like this aul news digest, ask friends to sign up here. Oh, and we are getting closer and closer to the big launch of Shift, if you haven’t joined the waitlist (it’s free), it’s right here. You’re gonna love it.

News from Home

Irish in Charge. Even in a more secular version of Ireland, the passing of a Pontiff is a momentous shock, and many Irish Catholics will be making the pilgrimage to the Vatican to pay their respects to the late Pope Francis this week. Interestingly, it’s an Irishman, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who’ll be running the Vatican until they elect a replacement. Farrell was born and raised outside Dublin, although he now has dual Irish-American citizenship after many years bishoping across the US for many years. While Cardinal Farrell is in charge now, he seems to be a bit of a longshot in the odds to get the Big Job. Guess we’ll know if we see some green smoke coming from the Vatican.

Lads, Where’s My Car? We’ve all been to boozy bachelor/bachelorette weekends where you wake up and find you’ve lost your keys/clothes/sense of purpose in life, but what about your car? That was the fate of Wicklow man “Kieran”, who drove to Cork for the party weekend, parked up his car, and could not find it the next day or the day after that, nor the day after that. For three full weeks, Kieran (he never did give his full name) searched in vain, knowing only that he had parked it on a random road outside the city. Eventually, he contacted local radio and put up a cash reward, and within minutes, a thrifty Corkonian got in touch to lead him to the vehicle.

Big Bill. Bill Belichick, famous for being one of the greatest NFL coaches of all time (and, we should add, having a girlfriend about 200 years too young for him), is bringing his North Carolina Tar Heels team to Dublin next year for the “College Football Classic.” It’ll mark ten years since the annual game has been held in the Aviva Stadium. With the NFL set to come to Dublin in the fall, Ireland is becoming a veritable haven for gridiron fans.

Blame Game. Ireland is not unique as a country in having a housing crisis, yet it has long shared with other countries a perceived common foe that has purportedly caused a shortage of affordable rental properties—Airbnb. However, a wide-ranging investigation has found that Airbnb is not at the “root cause” of the problem, in Ireland at least. Although, the report noted that Airbnb can lead to affordable housing shortages in specific localities.

The Irish Influence

Call it the Kneecap effect or something else, but it is clear that interest in the Irish language is starting to surge among the youth worldwide. These things don’t happen in a vacuum, though, and it takes the dedication of special people to make it happen. One of those is Co Armagh Gaeilgeoir Beth Nic Aodha, whose Irish language-focused magazine Glór Nua is making waves online. We’ve had a look at the magazine, and it’s great craic, making learning Irish accessible with snappy and funny bilingual articles focusing on cultural highlights that appeal to Gen Z, not dull translations about the history or wallpaper. Top stuff. Maith thú, Beth.

Cúpla Focal

An Pápa (On Pa-Pa) – The Pope. You don’t have to be an etymologist to work out that Pope means father, nor that the Irish translation directly comes from the Greek/Latin pappas/papa. You don’t address a priest that way, though, you say Athair (Father), like Athair Ted.

Blast from the Past

With the passing of Pope Francis, we thought we would take you back in time to one of the events in Irish history that had the most shared consciousness – the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1979. An estimated 2.5 million people came to see Pope JP at events across the island, and get this: Ireland’s population was just 3.3 million at the time, so you’re talking about 75% of an entire country coming out to see a fella with a Big Hat. Ireland has, of course, changed dramatically since that time; it’s much more secular, but that’s not to say that Catholicism doesn’t shape the lives of many across the island. Even those who can’t tell a tabernacle from a ciborium feel an affinity with Catholic tradition. It’s part of the country’s heritage, even if it is slipping away.

And One Last Thing….

Aside from the obvious example of Gaelic Games, In which sports do the Irish excel? Rugby (among the best in the world), horse racing (ditto), boxing (punch above our weight), soccer (middling to crap), basketball (let’s not go there). Yet, if you had to find a sporting genre where we generally lag the world, it’d be winter sports. In fact, if Disney wants a Cool Runnings sequel (Cúl Runnings, nah?), Ireland would be the place to do it. One of the problems is a lack of facilities, as well as important stuff like snow and ice, but that’s all going to change as Ireland gets its first dedicated winter sports arena. The $200 million development will have two Olympic-sized ice rinks, an 8,000-seater arena, and a high-performance training area. The Winter Olympics won’t know what hit it. ⛷️⛸️

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