Ireland awaits the Pope and greets him in Gaelic with the words “céad míle fáilte” meaning “one hundred thousand welcomes”. In their meeting with Pope Francis this morning, the Irish Bishops expressed their joy and expectations for the upcoming World Meeting of Families that Ireland will host in 2018. This is why – according to Mgr. Eamon Martin, Archbishop of Armagh and President of the Bishops’ Conference –, in the run-up to the event, the Irish Church has decided to focus on the family and the role that the family can play in the transmission of the faith. The Pope will find a very different Ireland “than the one he had known many years ago – the Archbishop told SIR news agency on the margins of the press conference – when he went to Ireland as a young priest to learn English”. It was the Pope himself who told the Irish Bishops about this yet unknown chapter in his life this morning. But “Ireland – Mgr. Martin said – has changed a lot in the past few years” and “today it finds itself in a situation of transition. In such situation, we are called to spread the message of the Gospel, and do it in a new way”. It is no longer a question of “imposing a doctrine”, but rather of having a place “for dialogue and encounter in society” where “our voice can be heard”.