“Ireland deserves our aid for so many reasons. The clergy and people of Ireland have always revered the Apostolic See. Indeed that nation has persevered in professing the Catholic religion in all distressful times, and the Irish clergy has worked industriously to spread the Catholic religion in the farthest parts of the globe. Finally the Irish nation zealously honors and understands divine Peter whose humble representative We are, and whose dignity, to quote the words of Leo the Great, ‘does not fail in the person of an unworthy heir.’ (Sermon 2)”  Pope Pius IX, “Praedecessores Nostros”, On Aid for Ireland, March 25, 1847, Par. 3