Pope Francis will touch down at Dublin airport on Saturday morning for a 36-hour trip to a country whose national identity was once steeped in conservative Catholicism but which has undergone a social revolution in the four decades since the last papal visit.

His historic trip, only the second by a serving pope, comes under the dark shadow of sexual abuse by Irish priests and cover-up by senior church figures with which Ireland is still struggling to come to terms. The visit will also put Francis in a global spotlight as the Vatican is reeling from scandals this year in the US, Australia and Chile.

Nevertheless, flags in Vatican colours are lining the River Liffey, and souvenir sellers have stocked up on Pope Francis dolls (€35, made in Spain), candles, rosary beads, fridge magnets, mugs, T-shirts and “lollipopes”. A giant drive-through confession box has been erected by bookmakers Paddy Power; “Repent decades of sins in seconds!” urges a hoarding outside.

At Phoenix Park, where Francis will celebrate mass on Sunday, 4,000 communion servers will be on hand and a 3,000-strong choir will sing. More than 600,000 free tickets have been allocated for the weekend’s main events, and 100,000 people are expected to line the streets of Dublin to glimpse Francis in his popemobile.

But the numbers will be significantly lower than the 2.7 million people – half the population of the island of Ireland – who turned out to see Pope John Paul II in 1979. Then divorce, contraception, abortion and homosexuality were illegal, and more than nine in 10 people attended mass each week.

Now those pillars of Catholic teaching have been overturned in successive popular votes and mass attendance is well below 10% in some Dublin parishes. Ireland’s taoiseach, or prime minister, Leo Varadkar – an openly gay man of Indian heritage who was born the same year as the last papal visit – embodies the profound changes in the country.

A recently unveiled waxwork of Pope Francis is carried from the National Wax Museum to a refurbished 1979 popemobile in Dublin. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

Even the head of the Irish Catholic church, Archbishop Eamon Martin, has admitted the depth of the change. The days of a “systemic culture in Ireland, in which everyone does everything because that’s what the church said they have to do … are long gone,” he told the Guardian.

On arrival, Pope Francis is unlikely to follow his predecessor in kissing the tarmac at Dublin airport; at 81, he has one lung and weakness in his knees means he no longer genuflects.

The itinerary for his short visit is filled with events typical of a papal visit: meetings with politicians, dignitaries and church leaders, homilies and speeches, popemobile tours and masses. He will address the World Meeting of Families, a triennial gathering of Catholics from more than 100 counties, and visit the huge Marian shrine in Knock.

The pope will not be travelling to Northern Ireland, though thousands of Catholics are expected to make the journey south. Arlene Foster, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party and the first minister of the Northern Ireland assembly before its collapse, declined an invitation to meet Francis, citing a family holiday. Thirty years ago, the Rev Ian Paisley, the DUP’s founder, declared Pope John Paul II the anti-Christ.

The Vatican has confirmed that Francis will meet privately with survivors of clerical sexual abuse. No details of the meeting will be disclosed in advance; it would be up to those invited if they wanted to make public statements afterwards, said Greg Burke, the Vatican spokesman.

The church has been engulfed in abuse scandals this year, culminating last week in a 2,000-word papal letter addressed to the faithful across the globe. It acknowledged and condemned “with sorrow and shame the atrocities perpetrated by consecrated persons” and begged forgiveness.

But Irish survivors and others elsewhere were dismayed that it proposed no concrete steps. “Our response to the letter is one of frustration, disappointment and anger,” Maeve Lewis of One in Four, a survivors’ organisation, told the Guardian. Some people in Ireland were “very distressed by the pope’s visit, it has re-triggered a lot of trauma,” she said.

Another survivor, Colm O’Gorman, who has organised a vigil at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin on Sunday to coincide with the papal mass in Phoenix Park, said a meeting between Francis and a handful of survivors was unlikely to address action. “These meetings are more like PR exercises. They don’t help us to get to the truth,” he said.

Victims advocate Marie Collins speaking at a panel event on safeguarding children and vulnerable adults at the World Meeting of Families in Dublin. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA

According to Simon Harris, the Irish health minister, the pope’s visit is “a once-in-a-generation chance” for the Vatican to accept its role in the “wilful cover-up of [child sex] abuse and the additional pain caused by denial and rejection of those who suffered”.

Varadkar has said he will not “skirt over” issues concerning abuse and human rights when he meets the pope on Saturday. He did not want to “just do them in a token way” but to ensure “there is truth and justice and healing for victims”.

As well as child sexual abuse, the taoiseach is likely to raise the mistreatment of vulnerable women in the Magdalene laundries and the forced or coerced adoption of babies born to unmarried women.

Yet, despite the challenging and painful context for his visit, for many of the three-quarters of Irish people who still identify with the Catholic church, Francis’s presence will be a time of joy and affirmation of their faith, and for others a reminder of their religious heritage.

Behind the bar of Ireland’s oldest pub, the Brazen Head, which dates from 1198, John Hoyne, 56, recalled going to see John Paul II in Phoenix Park with 45 members of his family. Despite no longer being a practising Catholic, he will be there again on Sunday to see Pope Francis.

“I’m very proud he’s coming to Ireland,” he said. “The Irish people are the most generous in the world. We forgive and forget because we’re a good-natured people. We’ve even forgiven the English for 800 years of tyranny. When he arrives, everyone’s spirits will be lifted.”

Highlights of the pope’s visit

Saturday

10:30 Arrives at Dublin international airport

11:30 Meets Ireland’s president

12:00 Dublin Castle meeting with politicians, civil society leaders and diplomats. Francis is due to give a short speech

15:30 Visit to St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral

16.15 Popemobile tour through central Dublin

17:30 Private visit to Capuchin Fathers day centre for homeless families

19:45 Address to the World Meeting of Families in Croke Park Stadium

Sunday

09:45 Arrives at the Marian shrine in Knock for Angelus prayers and popemobile tour

15:00 Mass in Phoenix Park

18:45 Departs for Rome