US President Joe Biden makes sentimental Irish pilgrimage

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US President Joe Biden embarked on a highly sentimental journey to trace his Irish ancestry Read More

with the institutional part of his journey on Thursday in Dublin, where he is set to meet Irish President Michael Higgins and Prime Minister Leo Varadkar. The highlight of his visit will be an address to both houses of the Irish Parliament, which will likely evoke the speech given by former US President John F. Kennedy, another US president of Irish Catholic descent, who addressed the same forum in 1963. During that speech, JFK lauded the “remarkable alliance of hope, trust, and imagination” that characterises Irish people.

On Wednesday, during a brief speech in Dundalk, one of his family’s birthplaces, Biden echoed JFK’s remarks, highlighting the US and Ireland’s similar “traits of faith, hope, and possibility.” He added, “Everything is possible if we decide to make it so, that’s who we are.”

His visit to Dublin will feature symbolic ceremonies. He will plant a tree and hear the “bell of peace” ring, installed in 2008 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Northern Ireland peace agreement.

On Wednesday, Biden visited Belfast to lend support to the delicate political balance in Northern Ireland. The region’s political institutions, which are supposed to secure cooperation among the former warring parties, are currently paralysed due to disagreement over the Brexit’s ramifications.

The Democratic Party leader, 80, who met with several of Northern Ireland’s key leaders, called for an end to the current impasse.

In Dublin, Biden will discuss, among other things, the shared efforts of Ireland and the United States to make “the global economy fairer,” according to the White House. Additionally, the President is expected to praise Ireland for its support of Ukraine.

However, while these issues are important, they are not the core of what is primarily a Biden family pilgrimage.

“It’s wonderful, it’s like coming home,” the President said on Wednesday.

On Friday, he will conclude his visit with a speech from Ballina, County Mayo (northwest), after another personal and familial visit.

Biden has had his maternal ancestry retraced in detail, the Finnegan and Blewitt families. With his childhood in a close-knit Irish family, Biden hopes to polish the image of a President from a modest and hardworking background. This might win him some votes among the 30 million Americans who claim Irish roots as he considers running for re-election in 2024.