At Knock Shrine, Biden meets priest who gave Beau last rites
President Joe Biden was moved to tears Friday during a stop at a Catholic shrine when he discovered that a chaplain working there had performed last rites on his late son Beau Biden, according to the parish priest
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.President Joe Biden was moved to tears on Friday during a stop at a Catholic shrine when he discovered that a chaplain working there had performed last rites on his late son Beau Biden.
Knock Shrine is a pilgrimage site where, according to Catholic lore, the saints Mary, Joseph and John the Evangelist appeared near a stone wall in 1879. Biden touched the remaining old wall, and toured the site with priest Father Richard Gibbons.
Gibbons said he discovered earlier in the day that the Father Frank O’Grady working at the site was the same one who'd performed last rites, a ceremony in the Catholic faith that spiritually prepares people for death, for Beau.
It's common in the Catholic faith for priests to move around to different posts during their lives in the church. O'Grady is a former U.S. Army chaplain and was formerly assigned to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., where Beau died in 2015 from brain cancer at the age of 46.
But Gibbons said he did not know about the Biden link until Friday.
“I told the president that," Gibbons told BBC Ulster. "He wanted to meet him straightaway, so he dispatched a Secret Service agent to go and find him.”
He said it was “a wonderful, spontaneous thing that happened.”
“He was crying and it really affected him,” he said of Biden. “Then we said a prayer, we said a decade of the rosary for his family, we lit a candle. Then he took a moment or two for private prayer.”
O’Grady told Irish national broadcaster RTE that he was summoned after learning of the Beau Biden connection.
“He gave me a big hug, it was like a reunion. He told me he appreciated everything that was done,” he said. “I hadn’t seen him really in eight years since Beau died. His son Hunter was there too, so we had a real reunion.”
O’Grady said that Biden misses his son. “He has been grieving a lot but I think the grief is kind of going down a bit. We talked a little bit about how grief can take several years.”
The death of his oldest son rocked the elder Biden, who was vice president at the time. He said he chose not to run for president in 2016 in part because of Beau's death. He talks of Beau often, including during a speech to the Irish parliament this week when he said it was his son who should have been standing there as president.
After the visit to the shrine on Friday, Biden toured a hospice center that displays a plaque commemorating his son.
Biden has been in Ireland this week with his sister Valerie and son Hunter, touring his ancestral home and meeting with the nation's leaders.