Shame: Irish bishops treated Reagan “like the plague” during 1984 visit to his ancestral homeland

St. Mary's Catholic Church,
Tampico IL, where Reagan's
father worshipped

The Irish Examiner is reporting that a historian discovered that when President Ronald Reagan visited Ireland in 1984--the Gipper's great-grandfather Michael Reagan emigrated from there in the 1850s--bishops there gave refused to meet with him because they opposed his Central American policy. They treated him as "like he had the plague" IrishCentral says.

Two of those bishops were later exposed as frauds. Eight years later it was revealed Eamon Casey of Galway fathered a child, he tried to convince the mother to give up the baby for adoption--she refused.

Archbishop Dermot Ryan of Dublin, another cleric offended by the great president, covered up sexual abuse by priests. A park named after him in the Irish capital was renamed because of the scandal, which was covered in detail in the 2009 Murphy Report.

Ryan died in 1985.

Reagan's great-grandfather is buried in Fulton, Illinois.

Related post:

Ronald Reagan Trail: Fulton and the Reagan graves