Limerick man gets to meet Pope Francis in ‘once in a lifetime experience’

A DOON man and his wife-to-be were one of the lucky few to privately meet Pope Francis at the weekend.

Joe Shanahan and his fiancée Róisín Buckley from Cappawhite  were blessed by the Pope in a moving ceremony in St Mary's Pro-Cathedral. Limerick winning the All-Ireland, Tipperary claiming the U21 title and meeting the pope will make it a week they will never forget. Joe, who owns JS Fitness and Performance and is Doon senior team’s strength and conditioning coach, said Róisín’s family are very involved in the church in Cappawhite. 

“She has sang there since she was knee-high. Fr Tadhg Furlong approached her about this application to see if you could go see the pope. It is a private meeting with all married couples within the last year, or couples who are going to be married within the next year. I think five couples from each diocese were picked out and we were one of the lucky five,” said Joe. 

Joe, aged 27, and Róisín, 26, are getting married on December 30, 2019. He says there was an air of excitement as they waited in St Mary's Pro-Cathedral for Pope Francis to arrive.

“It was some feeling now. I'd be a Mass-goer but I wouldnt be quite as religious as my fiancée. Even when you walked into the cathedral it was a strange old feeling - I didn't expect to feel that way. I never got a chance to ask him to bless Doon for the county championship - I'm hoping we wont need it!" smiled Joe. Pope Francis walked past each couple in the pews and blessed them.

“​He was really good to talk and he was actually quite humorous which I was really surprised about.  He was very relaxed,” said Joe. The couples were warned not to lunge out to shake his hand and phones were banned.

“​We had to go through a security screening. There was background checks done on us because it was such an intimate setting,” he explained.

However, Joe and Róisín had an experience that none of the other couples did.

“Flowers were presented to the Pope at the very start of the Mass. He prayed quietly for a minute or so at an altar and then left the flowers down behind the altar. We happened to get talking to a security guard afterwards and he just whispered, 'Do you want to get your hands on those flowers?' I said, ‘We would love them’. He said, ‘Hang on there a second’, he walked over, picked them up on the QT and handed them to us. He took a quick photo of us with them. He was very good. We were the only couple there to get our hands on those flowers, it was very nice,” said Joe.