Gary Boyd

Supernational Catholicity: Dublin and the 1932 Eucharistic Congress

In 1932, Dublin was the site for the Eucharistic Congress, a demonstration of Roman Catholicism on a scale hitherto unseen in Ireland. Over five days, the population witnessed or participated in a series of celebrations that included enormous open‐air masses, an array of illuminations festooning the buildings and lighting up the night sky, and parades and marches that snaked through the city. The event culminated in a benediction in the city centre that was witnessed by over half the country’s population of over a million people, the largest gathering in the history of the island. Despite the Catholic press’s assertions that the event represented an unearthly, holy experience, free from the base influences of politics or other profane issues, the use of religious‐inspired spectacle as a political tool had a long history in Ireland. In fact, the Congress can be seen as a continuation of phenomena such as the nineteenth‐century Devotional Revolution, which introduced a new sense of theatricality into both religious ceremonies and church architecture. Perhaps more paradoxically, it can also be linked to a tradition of Protestant and imperial spectacle on the island.