Breaking news: President Biden told a rapturous crowd in his ancestral hometown of Ballina on Friday evening that it was "incredible" to meet “out of the blue” the man who gave his late son Beau the last rites.

“It was like a sign,” he said.

Fr Frank O’Grady, who performed the ceremony for Beau before he died of brain cancer in 2015, is now working at the shrine, where the Virgin Mary is believed to have appeared in 1879.

Mr Biden said a plaque in memory of his son at a hospice among “the home of his ancestors” meant the world to him.

The US president travelled to Ballina, where excitement has been building for weeks.

Mr Biden delivered the final speech of his visit behind a bullet-proof screen outside Saint Muredach’s Cathedral on the east bank of the River Moy in Ballina, which was partly built by an ancestor.

Cathedral records show Edward Blewitt, the US president’s great-great-great grandfather, provided 27,000 bricks for the pillars supporting the nave of the church. He was paid £20.12 for his services in 1828.

Mr Biden’s great-great-grandfather Patrick Blewitt, who was from Ballina, travelled to the US as a 20-year-old cabin boy.

He returned two years later and convinced his father Edward, his mother and seven siblings to leave famine-ravaged Ireland and cross the perilous Atlantic on the SS Excelsior in 1851.

Continue reading the full article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/04/14/joe-biden-tears-meets-priest-son-beau-last-rites/

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