Traditional Catholic and Protestant Christians are likely to become religious and cultural allies

It is almost five years since Pope Francis visited the Republic of Ireland.

No-one from the DUP travelled down to that visit, although it had seemed for a time that someone within the party might represent it on the occasion.

The DUP was founded by the Rev Ian Paisley, who also led the Free Presbyterian Church, and there is still a fundamentalist strain within the party. It is not surprising, in a way, that DUP representatives found it hard to attend a papal visit.

Yet things have changed greatly since Pope John Paul II visited the Republic in 1979, and Dr Paisley warned the Vatican against him crossing the border.

Not least they have changed south of the border, where Catholic influence has collapsed.

There is, still, a very substantial Catholic, church going population, but nothing like what it was only decades ago. When the Troubles began in Northern Ireland in 1968, weekly church attendance among Anglicans and Presbyterians was already under 50%. Among Catholics it was almost 95%. Now weekly church attendance among the main four churches is all well below 50%. In that sense, the decline in Catholic adherence has been far more marked.

While almost half the Irish population made an effort 43 years ago to see a Pope John Paul who, on that visit, reaffirmed traditional Catholic doctrines, now such teachings are widely ignored. Roughly two thirds of people who voted in the Republic’s referendums on abortion and same-sex marriage endorsed reform.

Unionist politicians have hardly been rushing to pay tribute to Pope Benedict XVI, who has died at 95. But such traditional Catholics will increasingly become cultural allies to all but the most strict Protestant believers at a time when Christian influence in Europe is almost gone, and is much reduced even in the US.