The President of Ireland said Pope Francis had approached his papacy with “a unique humility” and advocated for the importance of human dignity.
Michael D Higgins also said Pope Francis had sought to play a “positive role” on issues such as attitudes to women and the LGBT+ community in the Catholic Church.
Irish premier Micheal Martin said Pope Francis was an “exceptional” leader who held “a special place in the hearts of Irish people”.
Ireland’s deputy premier Simon Harris called Pope Francis “a remarkable figure” who “bore his illness with great dignity and courage”.
Mr Higgins said: “As President of Ireland, may I join with all those across the world, from their different stations in life, who have expressed such profound sadness on learning of the death of Pope Francis.
“Pope Francis, in his important messages and in the presentation of his papacy with a unique humility, sought to show in the most striking and moving of ways the extraordinary importance of the spiritual as a powerful source of global ethics in the challenges of contemporary life.
Irish President Michael D Higgins said Pope Francis had constantly invoked a ‘shared humanity’ (Danny Lawson/PA)
“On the vital issues of our time – such as global hunger and poverty, of climate change and justice, of the plight of migrants and indigenous peoples, of the dispossessed, of the fundamental necessity of global peace and diplomacy – Pope Francis’s voice constituted a consistent invocation of a shared humanity that is represented by acknowledgement of the essential dignity of each human person.”
Mr Higgins said he and the Pope had discussed these issues “at length” during five meetings they had during his papacy.
He said that during the Pope’...
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