During his visit to Ireland, US President Joe Biden unexpectedly met on Friday with the priest who administered the last rites to his son Beau Biden. It was a very emotional moment, says another Irish priest who accompanied Biden during the visit.
Priest Richard Gibbons, who showed Biden around the pilgrimage site of Knock, told the BBC it was only after Biden’s arrival that he learned that one of his colleagues – Frank O’Grady, a former army chaplain – had administered the last rites to Beau Biden. “It just so happens that the chaplain who works here at the shrine is the one who administered the last rites, the last anointing, to his son in the United States,” he told the BBC.
Beau Biden, the eldest son of the president, died in 2015 in the United States of a brain tumor.
“He wanted to meet him immediately and sent a secret agent to find him. He cried, it touched him deeply and then we said a prayer, we said a tenth of the rosary for his family, lit a candle and he took a moment for a private prayer.”
“He laughed, he cried, and it just touched him. You could just see how deeply all this felt and meant to him. It was an extraordinary afternoon,” said Gibbons.
Biden, who today ends his three-day visit to Ireland – the land of his ancestors – later visited a nearby palliative center in Mayo County, where he laid the foundation stone for its construction in 2017. A memorial plaque at the entrance to the center is dedicated to Beau Biden.
The president, himself a Catholic, took the time to examine the plaque before greeting staff.
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