Pope Benedict XVI Stepping down Could Make Mother's Dream of an Irish Pontiff Come True

By Denis Hamill
New York Daily News
February 11, 2013

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/hamill-mother-dream-irish-pontiff-true-article-1.1261407

New York’s Timothy Cardinal Dolan (r.) would be the first Irish-American — not to mention American — Pope, if he succeeds Benedict, with whom he had friendly relationship with.

An Irish-American Pope would have made my mother’s life complete.

Hey, don’t laugh: Speculation swirls that New York’s Timothy Cardinal Dolan has an outside chance of succeeding retiring Pope Benedict.

In my mother’s home, the Pope was basically the King of the World.

My immigrant parents were raised Roman Catholics in the sectarian turmoil of Ulster, the six counties of Northern Ireland that in 1921 were divided from the 26 southern counties of the Republic of Ireland.

In Ulster, Protestant “loyalists” who swore allegiance to the British crown outnumbered Catholics, 2 to 1. My parents’ lives in Northern Ireland were defined by religious sectarianism akin to the way race has divided America. The reason my mother spelled my name with one N instead of the more common two in Dennis is because I was named for St. Denis, once the bishop of Paris. It didn’t matter that there were tasty rumors of St. Denis being a cannibal; he was an “R.C.”

If your name was Denis in Belfast, you were probably Catholic; if it was Dennis, you were likely Protestant. Both religions were Christian. But in Ulster, Denis swore allegiance to the Pope in Rome, and Dennis more likely to the Church of England.

RELATED: COULD DOLAN BE POPE?

Meaning D-e-n-n-i-s usually got the j-o-b.

My mother grew up in a Belfast neighborhood called the Short Strand, a small Catholic enclave surrounded by a roiling sea of Protestant loyalists, or “Orangees,” who worshiped a brutal British monarch named William of Orange III, a Dutchman who married into the British royal family and ousted the Catholic James II in the bloody Battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1689.

My mother told her seven American kids horror stories of religious bigotry suffered in Belfast when as a schoolgirl she’d be surrounded on the street by gangs of Orangees and told to curse the Pope in Rome. When she refused, she was spat upon and called a “dirty papist.” When her brother refused to slander his Pope, he was beaten bloody.

Sometimes people were killed — followed by retaliation.

Madness.

The Ulster Protestants and Catholics looked alike, ate the same greasy “Ulster fry” for breakfast, played the same sports, spoke with the same hard-edged industrial brogue, and worshiped Jesus Christ as the Son of God. But the Protestants did not recognize the Pope. And so when Catholics who worshiped the Pope applied for jobs, they were excluded by the section marked Education. If you listed a Catholic school — where most Catholics sent their kids — instead of a state school, where the Protestant King James Bible was taught, you almost always remained unemployed.

The likelihood of Cardinal Timothy Dolan becoming the next pope may be slim.

Because of this, Catholics in Northern Ireland clung to their religion and their guns. Many joined the Irish Republican Army, which led to the Troubles.

Fleeing this ignorant bigotry, my parents came to America for the same reason immigrants from all over the world still flock here: For work. For freedom.

In our Brooklyn home, the Pope in Rome, the vicar of Christ on Earth, was the final word. Case closed.

Amen.

My parents loved America, but never more than the day “our Jack” — as my mom called John F. Kennedy — was elected the first Catholic President. That he was an Irish-American made it a glorious day for my Belfast Catholic parents, who had become naturalized American citizens. As the great Jimmy Cannon wrote of Irish America after JFK’s victory, “That day we all stopped being ‘Micks.’ ”

On the wall of our tenement kitchen my mother hung three framed pictures side by side: Pope John XXIII, the “Sacred Heart of Jesus” and JFK.

Because she had grown up wiping the spit of bigotry from her face defending her Pope, my mother became an early supporter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. She despised bigotry in any form. I remember her weeping as she watched Southern cops siccing German shepherds on freedom riders because as a schoolgirl she had witnessed similar savagery done to Catholic protesters in Belfast.

One of my mother's most memorable days was attending a Mass said by Pope Paul VI at Yankee Stadium. The tickets were procured in pure New York fashion through Elaine Kaufman, a Jew from Rockaway who ran a celebrity hangout named Elaine’s on Second Ave., who put the strong-arm on George Steinbrenner, the Protestant owner of the Yankees, so that Annie Devlin Hamill, a Catholic from the Short Strand, could get a ringside seat to a Mass said by Il Papa.

“I sat two rows in front of Gov. Carey,” my mother said. “Then a white pigeon landed on the stage next the Pope. It was the Holy Ghost.”

She’d gone from the sectarian bigotry of Belfast to seeing JFK elected President to attending a Mass celebrated by a Pope.

Now there’s chatter that Dolan, an Irish-American, could be the next Pope.

If that happens, I’ll pop champagne over my mother’s grave.

Contact: dhamill@nydailynews.com