Married couple say seeing Francis ‘significant’ having first met at papal event
Patrick and Alice Gavigan, from Leixlip, Co Kildare, are on holiday in Rome and said the experience felt surreal.
A couple celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary have told of the “significance” of being able to attend Pope Francis’s wake in Rome – having first met decades ago at another papal event.
Patrick and Alice Gavigan were among some 20,000 people paying their respects to Francis in St Peter’s Basilica on the first day of his lying-in-state.
The nearly four-hour queue was “well worth it”, the retired couple aged in their 60s said, as they reminisced on their first meeting during a visit by Pope John Paul II to Ireland.
The pair, now living in Leixlip, Co Kildare, did not know each other when they went to Phoenix Park in Dublin in 1979 for that event, but met, married and have since had two daughters.
Mr Gavigan told the PA news agency: “There is a significance, really and truly. Not planned.
