Former President Mary McAleese, who is a professor of Religion at Glasgow.
By Bill Heaney
Most people would have a good word to say about Pope Francis. Even the most bitter of bigots and dyed in the wool, old school Protestants.
Mary McAleese, the former President of the Republic of Ireland for two terms, theology graduate and now professor of religion at the University of Glasgow, appears none too keen on him though.
In her newly published memoir, McAleese claims that Francis is excellent at talking the talk but fails when it comes to walking the walk.
McAleese has written Here’s The Story, a nearly 400-page book about her life so far.
In an interview around its launch, Roisin Ingle of the Irish Times, asked McAleese about Pope Francis.
She replied: “I’m not a big fan of any particular pope, to be honest. I think that Pope Francis is over-hyped. I think he’s a big disappointment for those who hoped, those who believe the Church needed reform and hoped that he would be the reformer, but he hasn’t been.
“He doesn’t get the women thing. He really doesn’t. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t really get the clerical abuse thing. So he does what he’s told, he does what his advisers tell him. So I think he’s probably a decent enough man. But the job that he has is way beyond his capabilities.
“And so the Church under his leadership has not progressed in any way … he still does what every other pope does. He gets up on the platform, and he talks to the world. He talks about climate change. That’s so easy. He talks about migrants. And that’s easy. And he talks about the poor. And that’s also easy.
“What else would a Christian do in those circumstances? But ask him to turn his gaze internally to the church, to its structures, to its teachings, to its assumptions and presumptions to the consequences of those teachings. And that doesn’t happen.
“Something has to interrupt us from the gravitational pull of stupidity and selfishness and dopiness. Love has a way and by which I don’t mean gushy, mushy stuff. I mean, the discipline, the discipline of decency.
“And the discipline of understanding that every other human being has the same human dignity and entitlement as you do.”
On a biographical note, McAleese was brought up in the Ardoyne in north Belfast, an area that accounted for one in every five violent deaths during the Troubles.
The beginning of the conflict in Northern Ireland coincided with the start of McAleese’s glass ceiling-smashing years as a lawyer and academic.
She was among the first three women to practise law in the North and was appointed as Trinity College Dublin’s Reid professor of criminal law while still in her 20s.
She turned to journalism but was unhappy with that and moved over into politics, running for the presidency.
After a bruising campaign she was elected president of Ireland in 1997 after Mary Robinson, serving two seven-year terms. She was the first woman in the world to succeed a female president and has since become a Canon lawyer.
The amazing life of Mary McAleese, from working-class Belfast to the presidential residence in the Phoenix Park to, more recently, Vatican-botherer-in-chief, is detailed in her door stopper of a book.
During lockdown, McAleese has been crafting face masks from her husband’s old shirts in their home near Carrick-on-Shannon, County Roscommon, where her father’s family are originally from.
Sensing the way the Covid wind was blowing, on March 11th McAleese flew home from Glasgow, where she lectures as a professor of children, law and religion.
The real story of McAleese’s affiliations was that, for years, she had not only been a key figure in longstanding anti-sectarian, ecumenical and cross-community work, but was also involved behind the scenes in the early Hume/Adams talks.
She felt it was important to tell this story fully in the book, to show how dangerous the misperceptions of her were, not just to the safety of her and her family, but to the peace process. Understandably, these episodes contributed to her distrust of the media who she writes in the book hunted in “feverish packs”.
Then President Mary McAleese pictured with three Irish cardinals the late Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who was brought up in Dalmuir and went to school at St Patrick’s, Dumbarton.
Ever the contrarian, McAleese always questioned her faith and railed against the “maleness” that was such an integral part of the Catholic religion and wider society.
Experiences of sexism and misogyny are another strong thread in the book. She voted yes in the recent abortion referendum.
She was ahead of her time on other issues such as gay rights and has grown-up twins, one of them, Justin, is gay and she campaigned with him in the same-sex marriage referendum.