Irish Leader Cracks Joke About Holy Water Before Meeting With Boris Johnson

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar is visiting New York this week for the United Nations General Assembly, where he will cross paths with Boris Johnson, the UK leader tasked with resolving the Brexit crisis. The issue of the Republic’s border with Northern Ireland is, of course, one of the biggest sticking points in Brexit negotiations.

Before he got on a plane Friday, Varadkar was given a gift from a local priest, Father Richard Gibbons: a bottle of holy water. Gibbons said it was a “small little bit of added protection for you.”

Varadkar’s response was priceless:

Well played. While he was undoubtedly just joking in good fun, leave it to an openly gay prime minister to mock the Catholic belief in holy water. (What else would you expect from a man whom the Church believes is “intrinsically disordered” since he’s married to a same-sex partner, a relationship that has presumably been consummated?)

It’s not like holy water would do any good for Johnson, anyway. A man whose career is built on lies isn’t about to stop because of a few drops of water that have been subjected to a religious ritual.