|
The
tour, a celebration of his close links to his ancestral homeland
and deep Catholic faith, has provided a preview of his planned
2024 re-election campaign, with enthusiastic flag-waving crowds,
photo-ops with babies and long, loquacious speeches.
"He draws energy from politics, he draws energy from people.
He's a natural politician," said Irish Foreign Minister Micheál
Martin, who spent Wednesday afternoon with Biden greeting crowds
in County Louth in the northeast.
"There's no waning of the appetite is what I would have detected
in those last few days," Martin told state broadcaster RTE.
Biden started his tour on Wednesday in Belfast on a more serious
note by urging political leaders there to restore their
powersharing government. On Thursday, he became the fourth U.S.
president to address the Irish parliament and attended a state
banquet at Dublin Castle.
After leaving Dublin, Biden was due to visit the Catholic shrine
at Knock, in northwestern Ireland, where he will be presented
with a stone from the gable wall of the Church where the Virgin
Mary is said to have appeared in 1879.
He will later travel to Ballina, the home town of Biden's
great-great-great-grandfather Edward Blewitt, who emigrated to
the United States with his wife and their eight children in
1851.
Biden will address a crowd in front of St Muredach's Cathedral,
whose construction Blewitt was involved with in the 1820s.
"It is a homecoming for him," said Joe Blewitt, a distant cousin
of Biden's. "He's so proud of his roots."
Ahead of the visit the town was being decorated with U.S. flags,
bunting and cardboard cutouts of Biden peering out of windows. A
mural of Biden overlooked the local school.
"This is massive for the town," said pub owner Michael Carr, 52,
who compared the impact on future tourism to that of actor John
Wayne's visit to the fellow County Mayo town of Cong in 1951 to
shoot The Quiet Man. "This is going to last for 40 years."
(Writing by Conor Humphries; Editing by Alex Richardson)
[© 2023 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2022 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
