Black smoke will billow as they seek to replace pontiff of talk radio

Confessional is lost as Joe Duffy quits Liveline

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WHEN white smoke billowed above the Sistine Chapel within hours of Joe Duffy announcing his departure from Liveline, an initial, mischievous thought rose up alongside the celebratory plume into a sun-kissed Maytime stratosphere.

Might the cardinal of Irish talk radio have swapped one confessional for another, Montrose for The Holy See?

It was a flippant, irreverent notion, one that had vanished long before Leo XIV had delivered the first public words of his papacy - “La pace sia con tutti voi (Peace be with you)” - to the faithful gathered below him in the sacred piazza of St Peter's Square.

Duffy doesn’t require those who come to him with the broken things in life to make penance. Instead, RTE's secular priest offers them the balm of a sympathetic ear.

As some 314,000 daily listeners testify, the healing and consoling power of that aural gift has stood the test of time.

Duffy's greatness as a broadcaster is rooted in his understanding that listening is often more powerful than talking, that attentive, empathetic silence can carry the non-speaker to new heights of eloquence.

There are an abundance of perceptive, thought-provoking observations in Colum McCann's latest lyrical novel, Twist.

A personal favourite is the one noting that “few of the stories we have inside us ever get properly spoken.” We hide.

Sometimes by choice, on other occasions for the lack of an alternative option.

Shyness, guilt, embarrassment, Machiavellian self-interest, a desire to conceal, fear that we might not mine the proper words from the seam of our thoughts, a sense of inadequacy that is the product of low self-esteem.

There are any number of barriers that inhibit us in parting the curtain of privacy and drawing open the windows to our inner being.

STORIES

Often the issue is more stark: The lack of an outlet for those stories that sit upon the soul like a deadweight and press us down.