Next year's International Eucharistic Congress will give the economy a
€7m boost -- a figure that could shoot up if Pope Benedict comes.
As reported, expectations are high among Irish church leaders that Pope Benedict will agree to preside at an open-air Mass in Croke Park on June 17, 2012, at the closing ceremony of the congress.
Congress organiser Anne Griffin told a conference at the RDS in Dublin Monday that the Croke Park Mass would attract 80,000 people, and
that the week-long celebration would bring an estimated 12,000 visitors
to Ireland.
Congress
secretary Fr Kevin Doran appealed for 300 volunteers to assist in
organising the event which runs from June 10 to 17, 2012, .
The congress theme will be 'The Eucharist: Communion with Christ and one another'.
Next
week, on St Patrick's Day, a pilgrimage of the Congress Bell will leave
Dublin's Pro Cathedral for St Patrick's Cathedral in Armagh.
From
there, it will travel to the other 24 dioceses in Ireland.
The bell is a
symbolic invite to Irish Catholics, and Christians of other traditions,
"to join in the call to faith, prayer, reconciliation and mission that
is at the heart of the church's preparation for the congress over the
next year and a half".
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin insisted that no plans had been put in place "at the moment" for a visit by the Pope to Dublin next year.
But Dr Martin confirmed that Pope Benedict XVI had been invited to visit Ireland by Cardinal Sean Brady on behalf of the Irish Bishops' Conference.
Pope
Benedict selected Dublin to host the 50th International Congress, a
series of devotional rallies which began in France in 1881 and are held
every four years in different parts of the world to make Catholics aware
of the importance of the Eucharist.
Dr Martin said Pope Benedict
would look at the Dublin congress in the overall context of the renewal
of the Irish church following recent revelations of clerical child
abuse.
The archbishop said that Pope Benedict did not attend the last congress held in Quebec in 2008, and his participation in Dublin would be subject to factors such as his health.
The
only previous time the congress took place in Dublin was in 1932 when
less than a decade after the Civil War it helped to unite people who had
taken different sides, Dr Martin added.
But he said that the next
Dublin congress would not be "a looking-back exercise, trying to
replicate what happened in 1932" when one million Catholics attended.
Dr Martin said: "These are very different times. There are people who will not be interested and people who have other parts of a church agenda."