Dublin Airport is considering ditching its 75-year-old tradition of blessing the airport’s planes.
The DAA is understood to be reviewing the ritual to see whether it complies with the airport’s strict security protocols.
Speaking to Moncrieff, travel expert Eoghan Corry said blessing an aircraft would have seemed completely normal in the 1940s.
“Blessing cars, blessing cows, blessing farm machinery - that was pretty much the norm in our grandparents’ time throughout the country,” he said.
Dublin Airport employs an airport chaplain and Mr Corry said even in a more secular Ireland, it is still “important” to have a clergyman on duty.
“[There are] a lot of coffins come in, people in distress,” he said.
“The chaplain would be on duty and it’s a chaplain from the nearby parish, Fr Des Doyle, who performs that duty.
“It’s an interesting custom because it hasn’t survived in many airports in the world and it’s really difficult to find a time to do it.”
A priest saying mass at a church in France, 28-3-21. Image: robertharding / AlamyWhen the blessing ritual began, Ireland was a much more devout country and very few people travelled by air.
“You only had just over 100,000 people going through the airport,” Mr Corry said.
“Dublin Airport’s numbers would be a fraction of what Kerry Airport would do nowadays.”
In 1949, Aer Lingus had bought seven new planes, they parked them together and a priest blessed them.
“In the Ireland of the time, I don’t think anyone would have objected to their aircraft being blessed,” Mr Corry said.
“Air travel was pretty new and people were a bit stressed about how this heap of metal could get up in the sky and down safely again.
“So, having it blessed was probably a huge advantage.”
Usually the blessing happens on Christmas Day when no flights leave or arrive at the airport.
“It was bowing to a previous generation’s traditions,” Mr Corry said.
“Now it’s become a little bit controversial in the last 24 hours.”
Main image: Planes at Dublin Airport. Photograph: Leon Farrell / RollingNews.ie
