The Irish Saint ... Pattabi?

Rest assured. I am not losing my mind.

I know it is not St. Pattabi's Day.

But, in case you forgot ... I want to remind you something about the visiting Prime Minister of Ireland, Leo Varadkar.

What has that got to do with Pattabi?  I was playing on "P" of Patrick and came up with the Hindu name of Pattabi.

So, why Pattabi?

Leo Varadkar is not "truly" Irish. If trump and his minions lived in Ireland, they would have burnt giant crosses across from Varadkar's home and tried their best to deport him.

The 39-year-old Varadkar is Ireland's youngest prime minister. He's the son of an Indian immigrant and the first openly gay politician in the post.

His father was a brown-skinned non-Christian immigrant from a shithole!

Maybe you forgot.  But, remember that I had blogged about him, less than a year ago?

Here's an excerpt from that post:

In that ancestral home of his--in Ireland--an "American" history is being created: The son of a Hindu immigrant is all set to be the next prime minister of Ireland.  He is only 38--younger than JFK's age when he was elected president.  And, oh, this young man is gay:

A gay son of an Indian immigrant is now all but certain to become the next prime minister of Ireland, a country that has rapidly been leaving its conservative Roman Catholic social traditions behind.
Leo Varadkar, who was chosen on Friday by the Fine Gael party to be its leader, and therefore the head of the center-right governing coalition, will be the first openly gay taoiseach (as Ireland’s prime minister is called), and, at 38, the youngest.

The kind of a story that we normally associate only with the US.

Who were/are his parents?

Mr. Varadkar was born in Dublin in 1979, the son of an Irish Catholic nurse from County Waterford and a Hindu doctor from Mumbai, India. His parents met in England in the 1960s and lived in India for a time before moving to Ireland.
Growing up in a country where religious divisions have historically run deep, he attended a Catholic elementary school and a Protestant high school that followed the Church of Ireland tradition. He told The Irish Times in 2015 that he was raised Catholic but was “not a particularly religious person.”

How fascinating!  Almost a made-for-movie story!

Varadkar reminds us:

“If my election today shows anything, it is that prejudice has no hold in this Republic,” Varadkar said at Dublin’s Mansion House after the results were announced, adding: “Around the world people look to Ireland as a country where it doesn't matter where you come from, only where you want to go.”

I should never matter where you came from.