Pope Francis is set to visit Ireland for two days in August and has a very busy schedule while he is here.
He will have an official welcome at Áras an Uachtaráin, a meeting with officials and Dublin Castle, and visit St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral on Saturday the 25th.
That evening he will head to Croke Park for the Festival of Families, which features music and dance as families around the world are celebrated.
However, one Irish singer has turned down the offer to perform for the Catholic leader.
Declan O’Rourke said he was invited by organisers of the World Meeting of Families to perform alongside Shane McGowan and Finbar Furey.
He said he found the invitation to perform ‘a bit shocking’.
“I had a bit of a moral dilemma, to say the least. I mean, I’m not a religious person. No disrespect to anyone else’s beliefs, but you know, I feel the Catholic Church is responsible for so much suffering in this country,” he told Joe Duffy on Liveline.
“I felt that if this was going to be a big ordeal made of family and everything that some kind of gesture would have to be made in solidarity with the victims of clerical abuse.
“I would have used my performance, I suppose, as a platform for that purpose, not disrespectfully, but just in solidarity, you know.”
The singer said he would have prefered if he could have said a few words to acknowledge any wrongdoings by the Catholic church.
“Obviously, I was not going to get to speak or perform. It wasn’t for me. It’s not sour grapes or anything but if I wasn’t going to get to do what I wanted to do, in the extent of at least playing some of my music and making that statement somehow…”
The singer added that he would have liked to say something along the lines of: “this goes out in acknowledgement of the victims of clerical abuse around this country,”
The We Didn’t Mean to go to Sea singer added that inevitably he wouldn’t have felt right taking part.
“You have to have your principles and I believe that standing up there and taking part in that concert, if you didn’t make the right acknowledgement to those victims would be wrong. I’m not for that in my career,” he said.
What do you make of his stance?