GENERATIONS OF ROMAN CATHOLIC IRISH REPUBLICANS HAVE PROCLAIMED loud and long that the source of all of Ireland s woes has been the presence of the English. The Emerald Isle, once famed as a land of Saints and Scholars, has been drenched in blood down the centuries, as inhuman fiends posing as patriots have murdered, maimed and massacred, rebelled and waged civil war, often with the blessing of the Roman Catholic clergy, in the supposed cause of Irish freedom.
However the suppressed facts of history are that when King Henry II of England landed with an army of 4,000 at Waterford in October 1171, he came at the Pope s behest and carrying as his authority the Papal Bull Laudabiliter, by which the Roman Pontiff claimed the right to bestow Ireland as a gift to the English King on condition that he suppressed the ancient Celtic or Culdee Church, and brought the island and its people into submission to Rome.
We reproduce herewith the Bull Laudabiliter by which Pope Adrian IV (above) gave Ireland to England: