President Joe Biden rounded off his visit to Ireland with a rousing speech celebrating his Irish heritage in front of a boisterous crowd in front of cathedral in western Ireland with a deep family connection.
As he did throughout his four-day trip here, Biden weaved together comments about hard work and the immigrant spirit with recitations about his ancestors who left Ireland behind to start a new life in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
He recalled how one ancestor Edward Blewitt once sold 27,000 bricks that helped support St. Muredach’s Cathedral in County Mayo, where Biden arranged a speech before tens of thousands of cheering Irish fans.
‘In 1828. he was paid 21 pounds and 12 shillings to help supply bricks for this cathedral,’ Biden said of his great-great-great-great grandfather.
‘I doubt he ever imagined his great-great grandson would return 200 years later as president of the United States of America. Isn’t that amazing?’ he asked, to cheers.
President Joe Biden addressed a crowd of thousands on the last day of his trip to Ireland outside St. Muredach’s Cathedral in Ballina, Ireland
Organizers said some 20,000 people packed into the space in front the cathedral and on the far side of the River Moy. Biden called himself a ‘a son of Ballina,’ the town where he spoke and his distant ancestors made their lives.
In a speech without a central organizing theme, Biden ran through the greatest hits of his trip, and ran through familiar phrases from the power of ‘possibilities’ and heralded the ‘fierce pride in our Irish ancestry’ of many Americans who claim Irish ancestry.
He laced his remarks with nostalgic references, including one to the nation’s first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, who made his own trip to Ireland 60 years go.
And he called JFK’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy ‘one of my political heroes.’
‘We Irish are the only people actually nostalgic about the future,’ Biden said, hauling back one of his favorite references.
‘We’ve always, always carried hope in our hearts,’ Biden said, after detailing the story of relatives who left Ireland during times of hunger in hopes of making a better life abroad.
Biden spoke of ties between Ireland and the U.S., and told family stories that are familiar to some U.S. audiences
Although he was hailed by thousands in Ireland, the event comes as Biden is inching toward a presidential reelection campaign
Organizers said 20,000 people came to see Biden in Ballina, where he has family ties
Spotlights illuminated the sky during the speech, where Biden recalled JFK’s own trip as president to Ireland
It came at the end of a trip Biden described as a highly personal undertaking
Biden brought along his son, Hunter, who is the subject of sprawling House Republican investigations over his overseas business practices, and sister Valerie Biden Owns, a key advisor on his many campaigns.
He spoke of a ‘fierce pride in our Irish ancestry’ and ‘the values that unite us,’ repeatedly drawing connections between Irish and Americans, on a trip where the White House was forced to field questions on whether he was anti-British.
The crowd lapped up Biden’s recipe for forward-looking nostalgia.
‘I’m an emotional wreck,’ said Mags Downey, chief executive of Ballina Chamber of Commerce.
‘The rain and my tears are mixing together.’
Biden also flew over crowd in Marine One before it started, after earlier wowing towns on the other side of the island with his motorcade and ‘the beast.’
Biden used the cathedral as a metaphor for hard work and aspiration, themes he rode to the White House by winning over rust belt battlegrounds.
‘It speaks to the sweat of the workers who raised the spire skyward, brick by brick, just as they did in communities all through my country,’ he said.
He got the chance to hold one of those historic bricks earlier Friday. ‘They’re damn heavy – they’re heavy,’ he said, tempering his language outside the church on a day when he also visited the Knock shrine.
The cathedral was illuminated to the tip of its spire, sending shards of light into the dark night.
And Biden entered to the sort of roars reserved for rock stars.
In a night designed for pageantry, Biden made sure to briefly address ‘Russia’s brutal war of aggression’ against Ukraine, and congratulated Ireland for taking in thousands of refugees – housing many of them in the country’s hotels.
‘We must renew our commitment to our values our ancestors fought for,’ Biden said.
‘Freedom, democracy: it always must be defended,’ he said.
It made for a carnival end to a four-day visit that saw Biden spend as much time meeting relatives and connecting with his Irish heritage as he did on official meetings.
Biden spoke to Irish American ties during his speech
On Friday he spent the day in County Mayo, once home to the Blewitt branch of his mother’s family.
He was presented with a brick from his ancestors’ home in Ballina, just a short walk from the cathedral.
Earlier he visited Knock Shrine, a site of holy pilgrimage for Catholics from all over the world.
It held a more personal connection for Biden.
‘We also met out of the blue a former military chaplain Fr O’Grady who gave my son last rites at Walter Reed Medical Center,’ said the president.
‘It was incredible to see him, it seemed like a sign.’
Earlier his host, Fr Richard Gibbons described how Biden broke down sobbing at the encounter.
‘He was crying, it really affected him and then we said a prayer, said a decade of the rosary for his family,’ he told the BBC.
‘He lit a candle and then he took a moment or two of private for prayer.’
