Biden Remembers Late Son In Emotional Mayo Visit

President Joe Biden has had a chance encounter in Mayo with the priest who performed the last rites on his son Beau who died from brain cancer.

Beau Biden, the former Delaware Attorney General, died in 2015.

During a visit to Knock Shrine, the president met ex-US Army chaplain Fr Frank O’Grady who is now working at the shrine.

The parish priest who brought about the meeting said it was a “wonderful, spontaneous thing”.

Fr Richard Gibbons told BBC Radio’s Ulster’s Evening Extra programme he gave President Biden a tour of the basilica at Knock Shrine and said he spoke about his family, his faith and his son Beau.

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“It just so happened, that we have working at the shrine here the chaplain who gave the last rites, the last anointing, to his son in the United States,” he said.

“He wanted to meet him straight away, he dispatched a secret service agent to go and find him.

“He got the shock of his life, to come over, so that was a wonderful spontaneous thing that happened.

“He [President Biden] was crying, it really affected him and then we said a prayer, said a decade of the rosary for his family.

“He lit a candle and then he took a moment or two of private for prayer.”

Knock Shrine is a pilgrimage site for Catholics. In 1879 locals said they saw an apparition of Mary, Joseph, John the Evangelist, angels and an altar with a cross and a lamb (representing Jesus).

According to Irish tourism sites, 1.5m pilgrims visit Knock Shrine every year.

Mr Biden, who is being accompanied by his sister Valerie Biden Owens, has links to the County Mayo through his great grandfather Edward Blewitt.

He is due to speak at a homecoming celebration outside St Muredach’s Cathedral in Ballina on Friday night, with a crowd of up to 20,000 people expected to line the streets.

It is thought that the president will be presented with a brick from a fireplace that is the last surviving piece of his ancestral home in Ballina.

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President Biden is also expected to make a private visit to the Mayo Roscommon Hospice in Castlebar that is dedicated to his son, Beau.

The president will also visit the North Mayo Heritage Centre.

Its family history research unit works with people around the world who want to trace their ancestry from Mayo.

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Photo Credit: Getty

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