FORMER PRESIDENT Éamon de Valera had a vision of Jesus Christ in
1928, two years after he founded Fianna Fáil, a new book claims.
The biography
Éamon de Valera – Irish: Catholic: Visionary , by Anthony
Jordan, also details how when the former president was 80, he decided he
would resign from office and join the Holy Ghost community at Blackrock
College in Dublin should his wife Sinéad predecease him.
In fact she
died in January 1975 aged 96 and he died eight months later at 92.
The
book suggests that de Valera’s conviction that he had a vocation was
rebuffed because of the view at the time was that “anyone whose
paternity was in any way unclear should not be accepted for the
priesthood”.
The book says de Valera was born in New York in 1882
but that “when his father died prematurely, his mother felt unable to
raise the boy herself and sent him back to her own mother in Knockmore”.
De
Valera maintained a “close lifelong association with Blackrock College”
and the book says “the most important event of his life, a vision of
Jesus Christ, occurred there”. This involved a Fr Leen, with whom de
Valera “had a deep spiritual affinity”.
The book quotes Fr Seán Farragher of Blackrock College.
During
a private visit, “Dev was in conversation with Fr Leen . . . when for
one moment, instead of Fr Leen he saw superimposed on him the figure of
Our Lord. Dev added that he frequently felt that he was never as close
to Christ and His Mother as in the presence of Fr Leen.”
“The
other person to whom Dev spoke of this experience was his own son
Éamon,” Fr Farragher said.
“Dev’s astute secretary Kathleen O’Connell
also knew of it and felt that it would be wiser not to publicise the
event.”
SIC: IT/IE