Oct
21
11:00
‘Luxeuil 1950: Ireland and the foundation of the European Union’
Dr Jean-Michel Picard, Professor Emeritus UCD School of Languages and Literature
- 📅Monday, October 21, 2024
- 🕥11:00 - 12:00
- 🏟Royal St. George Yacht Club (map)
St Columbanus (543-615), a native of Myshall Co Carlow, was one of the first to voice the concept of a united Europe, a perspective reflected in the founding of the EU 1,400 years later.
He and 12 Irish monks established Luxeuil Abbey in Luxeuil-les-Bains, Franche-Comté in 590. They fostered Celtic monastic traditions. Luxeuil Abbey was one of the oldest and became one of the best-known monasteries in France.
Columbanus inspired Robert Schuman (1886-1963), former French Foreign Minister and devout Catholic, who with Jean Monnet (1888-1979) jointly published the ‘Schuman Plan’ on 9 May 1950 to place French and German coal and steel under a single authority.
Schuman held that ‘Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity’.
Josephine McNeill (1895-1969), the first Irish woman to lead a diplomatic mission, reported from The Hague that ‘the speed of French thinking left the Dutch slightly stunned’ because ‘France’s insistence on Big Power status had been proving a seriously obstructive factor to European co-operation’.
Pope Francis placed Schuman on the road to sainthood in 2021 by declaring him ‘Venerable’. Archbishop Noël Treanor, Apostolic Nuncio to the EU unveiled a plaque to Schuman at Luxeuil Abbey on 15 June this year – less than two months before Treanor died unexpectedly last month.