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Over the weekend of the Papal visit, the country saw a number of counter movements come to the fore. Possibly the two most prominent of these was the Tuam Vigil led by Catherine Corless, and the Stand 4 Truth event help in the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin city centre.

The only topic to begin this week is the Pope. There are so many emotions swirling around that it is difficult to focus exactly on what happened and how it will affect Ireland.

The rain fell at a steady drizzle from the early hours of the morning, but that did not put off the thousands of pilgrims who made their way to Knock Shrine to greet Pope Francis.

Knock Shrine is gearing up for the arrival of upwards of 45,000 pilgrims along with media from more than 30 countries for the visit of Pope Francis to the national shrine on Sunday morning.

A carefully modified Skoda Rapid will transport Pope Francis during his visit to Ireland.

Historian Catherine Corless has declined an invitation to a civic reception for Pope Francis at Dublin Castle this Saturday.

Thousands of people are expected to travel from around Galway to Knock and Dublin this weekend to see Pope Francis, who will visit Mayo's Marian shrine on Sunday.

A five minute video portraying the scandal of the Tuam mother and baby home has received hundreds of thousands of views on Facebook.

With the Papal visit this weekend, it is evident that this event has garnered much attention throughout the country. Ultimately, this visit means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For many people of faith, it is a positive event that the Head of the Catholic Church will be visiting our fair Ireland for the first time since the last Papal visit almost 40 years ago. Both Dublin and Knock are very much prepared for the vast number of devout followers that intend to share an audience with Pope Francis.

The papal visit this weekend will see plenty of celebratory flags and bunting on show but the Ireland of today is very different to the one which greeted John Paul II in 1979. One small, yet vivid, symbol of our changed country is the advocacy group Atheist Ireland, founded in 2008, and which has some 500 subscribers, as well as 13,000 likes on its Facebook page.