Saturday 2 July 2022 04:45 PM Wild story of Australian monk who hijacked Irish plane to demand Pope reveal ... trends now

An ex-monk from Western Australia carried out one of the most bizarre hijackings in history, dragging Ireland, France and Iran into the plot as he tried to expose a tightly held secret of the Catholic church.  

On May 2, 1981, Laurence Downey hijacked an Aer Lingus Boeing 737 demanding Pope John Paul II reveal the 'third secret of Fatima', which had been guarded since 1917. 

The secret was eventually revealed by the Vatican in 2000 as a vision of the 1981 assassination attempt on the pontiff.

Downey boarded flight EI 164 along with 112 other passengers and crew on the Irish national carrier's Dublin to Heathrow route.

If the 'holy hijacker', as he came to be known, initially stood out at all, it was only for his good manners. 

'He was very polite to (my daughter and I),' passenger Terry McCormack said.

But Downey had a dark past - he had been a mercenary, a merchant seaman and professional boxer - and was about to hijack a plane armed with a bottle of what he claimed was cyanide and his faith. 

And he was no ordinary terrorist. Downey had been a Trappist monk in Rome in the 1950s but was expelled for punching the head of the order in the face.

He then worked as a tour guide in Fatima, Portugal, where on May 13, 1917 three children claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary in a vision and were told three great secrets.

Downey returned to Perth but later fled to Ireland, leaving behind a wife and five children and an alleged $70,000 land fraud.

He initially settled in the coastal town of Shannon, but later lived in Dublin up until the point he hijacked a plane. 

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With a strong tailwind, the flight went quickly and was five minutes from landing in London when one of the cabin crew saw a passenger going into the toilet despite the 'fasten seatbelt' sign being on.

Ms McCormack remembered him.

'He looked like a very prosperous business man, very well dressed, grey hair and very tanned,' she said.

But Downey had a desperate plan on his mind.  

'When I got up and turned around this passenger was there and he was covered in petrol,' said air hostess Deirdre Dunphy.

'And he had two little vials and said they were cyanide gas. That was the start of it.' 

A NEW CONSTITUTION 

Downey moved quickly to the cockpit and demanded the plane not land in London, but carry on to the Iranian capital Tehran.

He said he had a new constitution for the Iranian people. 

Captain Edward Foyle explained that if he wanted to fly the extra 5,000km to Tehran they would need to refuel, so they changed course and landed at Le Touquet airport in the northern French region of Normandy. 

French authorities were waiting for the plane to arrive and an almost eight hour stand-off ensued.  

As most of the passengers were from Ireland, the Irish government in Dublin was kept abreast of what was happening 637km away in Normandy.

Albert Reynolds, Ireland's then-transport minister and later prime minister, made his way to Dublin airport. 

Journalist Sam Smyth, who reported on the story for the Sunday World newspaper, said Mr Reynolds was also worried about the plane as Aer Lingus, at the time, was state owned. 

'(He) was obviously concerned for the crew and the passengers on the plane, (but) also had a very real concern for the aircraft because (he) would turn to me from time to time and say "That's our bloody aircraft. We have to get that aircraft back",' Smyth recalled years later. 

But why had Downey really hijacked the plane?

Hijackers at the time often demanded prisoners from the terrorist organisation they belonged to released, but he had made no such requests.