Yesterday, and on every previous Sunday since 1979, visitors clustered around the Papal cross in the Phoenix Park.That this unprepossessing monument continues to attract visitors two decades after the visit of the Pope for whom it was erected, is a testament to the emotional impact that visit had.
It is unlikely that the Eucharistic Congress of 2012 will have as great an impact.
Yet we can be sure that by the time it ends, people of all and no religions will have found it impossible to ignore.
This will be doubly so if Pope Benedict XVI attends the Congress -- and he can expect to have his arm twisted expertly to that effect by Vatican expert and Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin.
MILESTONES
The 2012 event will be one of three major public milestones in the history of the Catholic Church in Ireland in the past century.
The atmosphere today -- and in four years time -- could not be more different to that in which those events took place.
The first event was the 1932 Eucharistic Congress. The Catholic Church was in its great period of power at the time. Social, political and economic policymakers were obliged to defer to the beliefs of the Church in Ireland.
By the time of the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1979, a major shift had occurred. The visit represented the last stand of clerics such as Bishop Eamon Casey and Father Michael Cleary though neither they nor we knew it.
The scandal of clerical child abuse was about to hit a Catholic Church which was going to deal with it very badly.
The prospect of having to curtail church services because of a shortage of clergy was already looming, though this was probably more obvious to perceptive observers among the clergy than to the public.
The major change was that people had begun to drift away from the church and this was a theme of addresses to the Irish by Pope John Paul.
Since then, that drift has become a flood. The number of us who see the inside of a church only for baptisms, first communions, confirmations, weddings and funerals has soared.
Many Catholics will see the Eucharistic Congress as an opportunity to renew the faith in Ireland.
Many Irish people will see it as an opportunity to make money out of the faithful and out of the tourists whom the Congress in likely to attract.
But thanks to the still unique, if diminished, role of the Church in Irish society, those people whose Catholicism is entirely nominal can expect to be dragged into the preparations nevertheless.
Most of our schools are linked to the Church or to religions congregations. It is a safe bet that schoolchildren will be marshalled throughout the country to get involved in 2012.
LIBERALS
We will, no doubt, have a variety of controversies as these preparations jar on the sensibilities of people of other religions or on those of that most intolerant of species, liberals of no religion at all.
Such controversies will help to keep us amused during the recession but as 2012 approaches we can expect "Congress fever" to take hold.
Will there be a renewal of religious faith and, specifically, of Catholicism?
There appears to be a hunger for something beyond the purely materialistic society we have created.
But church policies on issues such as celibacy and the ordination of women are likely to deter those who might otherwise turn towards Catholicism.
And in its depleted state, it is not clear whether the Church has the capacity to take advantage of a renewal.
But for now, all will be busyness and preparation in the parishes of Ireland for the nearest event to the Olympics that we are likely to get.
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Sotto Voce