During his visit to Ireland, US President Joe Biden had an unexpected meeting on Friday with the priest who performed the last rites for his son, Beau Biden. It was a very emotional moment, says another Irish priest who was accompanying Biden during the visit.
Priest Richard Gibbons, who showed Biden around the pilgrimage site in Knock, told the BBC that it was only after Biden arrived that he learned that one of his colleagues – Frank O’Grady, a former army chaplain – was administering last rites to Beau Biden. . He told the BBC: “It just happened to be the priest who works here at the shrine who performed the last rites, the last anointing, of his son in the States.”
Beau Biden, the president’s eldest son, died in 2015 in the United States of a brain tumor.
He wanted to meet him immediately and sent a secret agent to find him. He cried, he touched him deeply and then we prayed, we said a tenth of the rosary for his family, we lit a candle and he took a moment to perform a private prayer.”
“He laughed, he cried, and it just touched him. You can just see how deeply all this felt and what it meant to him. It was an extraordinary era,” Gibbons said.
Biden, who today ended his three-day visit to Ireland — the land of his ancestors — later visited a nearby lodgement center in County Mayo, where he laid the foundation stone for its construction in 2017. A memorial plaque at the entrance to the center is dedicated to Beau Biden.
The president, himself a Catholic, took the time to examine the painting before greeting the staff.
Biden celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement for Northern Ireland and calls for keeping the peace
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