President Joe Biden to make a special private visit to Mayo Hospice

President Biden will honour the memory of his late son, Beau, tomorrow when he makes an emotional private visit to the Mayo Hospice in Castlebar.

In 2017, Mr. Biden travelled to the Mayo capital to turn the sod on the site for the new hospice complex.

At the time he described the ceremony as “a deeply moving experience."

And in a video message to the hospice on its official opening of the €6.3 million palliative centre centre two years ago, Mr. Biden congratulated its founders.

“I know this special place will bring comfort to the proud people of Co Mayo and Roscommon, and for me, it’ll always have a special place in my heart,” he said.

And he thanked the hospice promoters for honouring his son, Beau, who died in May 2015, after suffering from cancer.

“The fact that you have etched Beau’s name in memory into the tapestry of this hospice is something my family and I, and his children in particular, will never, ever forget."

The president will visit the hospice tomorrow either before or after visiting Knock Shrine, where he will be welcomed by Knock P.P. Fr. Richard Gibbons.

On the same afternoon he will visit the North Mayo Heritage and Genealogical Centre in Crossmolina prior to a public speech near St. Muredach’s Cathedral.

Details of Mr. Biden’s visit to the hospice are being kept under wraps but his appearance has been confirmed by local sources.

A series of road closures and car parking restrictions throughout Castlebar on Friday also indicate that a visit by an extra special dignatory is in the offing.

The Mayo Roscommon Hospice Foundation funds palliative care to people with life-limiting illnesses and their families in counties Mayo and Roscommon.

Quoting W.B. Yeats’s poem, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, on his last visit, Mr. Biden said: “For all those who’ve come to this hospice in the future, I pray they and their families will find peace there, for peace comes dropping slowly, but it comes. It comes.”