Probus Dún Laoghaire Marine
Current Events Programme

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.






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