A Different View with Dave O’Connell

When you come from an era where the infallibility of the Pope was beaten into you like the ten times tables, the sight of the most powerful religious leader on the planet being pushed around in a wheelchair can be a little disconcerting at the very least.

Because nothing suggests the demise of power quite like the inability to stand on your own two feet. That’s not meant to be hurtful; it’s just not the first impression that his predecessors gave when they entered a room.

And then again, maybe that’s precisely the point.

Because here is a man embracing life’s last chapter, still travelling and trying to make up for the church’s wrongs of the past – but doing it at his pace and in a way that dignifies older age and empathises with those who share his impediments.

Life expectancy in Ireland is 82.66 years, up 0.18 per cent on 2021. More pertinently in 1950, it was just 65 and a half years and as recently as 1982 it was just under 73.

All of that explains why the pension age was set at 65 back in the 1930’s because you’d knock a year or two out of it – but estimates last year put the number of centenarians in Ireland at just under 2,200.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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