President Mary McAleese received an honorary degree and delivered the commencement address at Villanova University, Philadelphia yesterday, at the start of an eight-day tour of the United States and Canada.
This morning Mrs McAleese will arrive in Seattle on the west coast with a trade delegation of 29 companies drawn from the aviation and high-tech sectors. The President is accompanied by her husband Martin McAleese, Minister of State for Enterprise Michael Ahern and Enterprise Ireland chief executive Frank Ryan.
After being conferred with an honorary doctorate of laws at the university, Mrs McAleese gave a personal account of the rupture in her family in Belfast when a close cousin, Ann Dillon, who was present in the audience, emigrated to Pennsylvania.
She and her cousin were born in Belfast within weeks of each other, she said.
"We started school together, sat in the same class, travelled there together hand in hand until the day she emigrated to Philadelphia at the age of nine." The loss of a best friend was a "sudden emotional amputation". Belfast at the time was a "cold house for Catholics", Mrs McAleese added, noting that these were the words of former Unionist leader David Trimble, but her own family reluctantly decided to stay.
Caitlan Dillon, the daughter of Mrs McAleese's cousin, was among Villanova's graduates yesterday. The university was founded in 1842 by Augustinian monks from Ireland.
Mrs McAleese's visit was the subject of a protest from the Cardinal Newman Society, based in Virginia, which has been campaigning against Catholic universities hosting speakers who do not adhere to strict Vatican doctrine. The society singled out Mrs McAleese as an advocate for female ordination and gay rights.