Since our last meeting the death has taken place of His Excellency Most Rev. Monsignor Ettore Felici, the Nuncio Apostolic, after a period of less than two years in residence here. As direct representative of His Holiness the Pope and Dean of the Diplomatic Corps in Dublin, Monsignor Felici was naturally entitled to the respect and loyalty of our people. But to those who had the honour of meeting him he appeared not alone as a man of great intellectual attainments, a distinguished diplomat in the long tradition of the Vatican but also a friendly, unaffected priest, full of goodwill towards our country.
Seanad Éireann is the only House of the Oireachtas in existence at the moment and I am sure that all the members will desire to be associated with the many expressions of sympathy which have been offered to His Holiness on the passing of his great representative in Ireland.
Senators rose in their places.