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Tag Archives: The Venerable


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Death of Matt Talbot

Matthew Talbot, an Irish ascetic revered by many Catholics for his piety, charity and mortification of the flesh, suddenly dies on a Dublin street on June 7, 1925. Though he has not yet been formally recognized as a saint, he has been declared Venerable and is considered a patron of those struggling with alcoholism. He is commemorated on 19 June.

Talbot is born on May 2, 1856, at 13 Aldborough Court, Dublin, the second eldest of twelve children of Charles and Elizabeth Talbot, a poor family in the North Strand area. He is baptized in St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral on May 5. His father and all but the oldest of his brothers is heavy drinkers. In 1868, he leaves school at the age of twelve and goes to work in a wine merchant’s store. He very soon begins “sampling their wares,” and is considered a hopeless alcoholic by age thirteen. He then goes to the Port & Docks Board where he works in the whiskey stores. He frequents pubs in the city with his brothers and friends, spending most or all of his wages and running up debts. When his wages are spent, he borrows and scrounges for money. He pawns his clothes and boots to get money for alcohol. On one occasion, he steals a fiddle from a street entertainer and sells it to buy drink.

One evening in 1884, 28-year-old Talbot, who is penniless and out of credit, waits outside a pub in the hope that somebody will invite him in for a drink. After several friends had passed him without offering to treat him, he goes home in disgust and announces to his mother that he is going to “take the pledge” (renounce drink). He goes to Holy Cross College, Clonliffe, where he takes the pledge for three months. At the end of the three months, he takes the pledge for six months, then for life.

Having drunk excessively for 16 years, Talbot maintains sobriety for the following forty years of his life. There is evidence that his first seven years after taking the pledge are especially difficult. He finds strength in prayer, begins to attend daily Mass, and reads religious books and pamphlets. He repays all his debts scrupulously. Having searched for the fiddler whose instrument he had stolen, and having failed to find him, he gives the money to the church to have Mass said for him.

Even when his drinking is at its worst, Talbot is a hard worker. When he joins Pembertons, the building contractors, as a hod-carrier, his work-rate is such that he is put first on the line of hodmen to set the pace. Later, in Martin’s timber yard, he takes on the meanest and hardest jobs. He is respectful to his bosses but not obsequious, and on occasion stands up for a fellow worker. On September 22, 1911, he joins the builder’s labourers branch of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU). When the Dublin Lockout of 1913 leads to sympathy strikes throughout the city, the men of Martin’s, including Talbot, come out. At first, he refuses his strike pay, saying that he had not earned it. Later he accepts it but asks that it be shared out among the other strikers. After his death a rumour is put about that he was a strike-breaker in 1913, but all the evidence contradicts this.

From being an indifferent Catholic in his drinking days, Talbot becomes increasingly devout. He lives a life of prayer, fasting, and service, trying to model himself on the sixth century Irish monks. He is guided for most of his life by Michael Hickey, Professor of Philosophy at Holy Cross College. Under Hickey’s guidance his reading becomes wider. He laboriously reads scripture, the lives of saints, the Confessions of Saint Augustine, and the writings of Francis de Sales and others. When he finds a part difficult to understand, he asks a priest to clarify it.

Hickey also gives Talbot a light chain, much like a clock chain, to wear as a form of penance. He becomes a Third Order Franciscan in 1890 and is a member of several other associations and sodalities. He is a generous man. Although poor himself, he gives unstintingly to neighbours and fellow workers, to charitable institutions and the Church. He eats very little. After his mother’s death in 1915, he lives in a small flat with very little furniture. He sleeps on a plank bed with a piece of timber for a pillow. He rises at 5:00 a.m. every day so as to attend Mass before work. At work, whenever he has spare time, he finds a quiet place to pray. He spends most of every evening on his knees. On Sundays he attends several Masses. He walks quickly, with his head down, so that he appears to be hurrying from one Mass to another.

Talbot is on his way to Mass on Trinity Sunday, June 7, 1925, when he collapses and dies of heart failure on Granby Lane in Dublin. Nobody at the scene is able to identify him. His body is taken to Jervis Street Hospital, where he is undressed, revealing the extent of his austerities. A chain had been wound around his waist, with more chains around an arm and a leg, and cords around the other arm and leg. The chains found on his body at death are not some extreme penitential regimes but a symbol of his devotion to Mary, Mother of God, that he wished to give himself to her totally as a slave. His story quickly filters through the community, and there are many spectators when his funeral takes place at Glasnevin Cemetery on June 11, 1925. In 1972, his remains are removed to a tomb in Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Seán McDermott Street, Dublin, in the area where he spent his life.

As word of Talbot spreads, he rapidly becomes an icon for Ireland’s Catholic temperance movement, the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association. His story soon becomes known to the large Irish diaspora communities. Many addiction clinics, youth hostels and statues have been named after him throughout the world. One of Dublin’s main bridges is also named after him. A statue of Talbot is erected at Sir John Rogerson’s Quay in 1988. Pope John Paul II, as a young man, wrote a paper on him.

There is a small plaque in Granby Lane at the site of Talbot’s death. Prior to the current plaque on the Eastern side of the lane, a small brass cross was inlaid in a stone wall on the Western side of the lane.

In August 1971, Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid unveils a plaque to Talbot at a block of flats known as “Matt Talbot Court” due to it being on the same site as one of Talbot’s residences. President Éamon de Valera and Fine Gael leader Liam Cosgrave attend the ceremony.

(Pictured: Portrait of Matt Talbot, near the end of his life, taken from the only photograph known to exist)


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Birth of Edward Flanagan, Founder of Boys Town

Edward Joseph Flanagan, Irish-born priest of the Catholic Church in the United States, is born on July 13, 1886, in the townland of Leabeg, County Roscommon, near the village of Ballymoe, County Galway. He founds the orphanage known as Boys Town located in Boys Town, Douglas County, Nebraska, which now also serves as a center for troubled youth.

Flanagan is born to John and Honoria Flanagan. He attends Summerhill College, Sligo.

In 1904, Flanagan emigrates to the United States and becomes a U.S. citizen in 1919. He attends Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland, where he receives a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1906 and a Master of Arts degree in 1908. He studies at Saint Joseph’s Seminary in Dunwoodie, Yonkers, New York. He continues his studies in Italy and at the University of Innsbruck in Austria where he is ordained a priest on July 26, 1912. His first parish is in O’Neill, Nebraska, where from 1912 he serves as an assistant pastor at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church. He then moves to Omaha, Nebraska, to serve as an assistant pastor at St. Patrick’s Church and later at St. Philomena’s Church.

In 1917, Flanagan founds a home for homeless boys in Omaha. Bishop Jeremiah James Harty of the Diocese of Omaha has misgivings but endorses Flanagan’s experiment. Because the downtown facilities are inadequate, he establishes Boys Town, ten miles west of Omaha in 1921. Under his direction, Boys Town grows to be a large community with its own boy-mayor, schools, chapel, post office, cottages, gymnasium, and other facilities where boys between the ages of 10 and 16 can receive an education and learn a trade.

Boys Town, a 1938 film starring Spencer Tracy based on Flanagan’s life, wins Tracy an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance. Mickey Rooney also stars as one of the residents. Tracy spends his entire Oscar acceptance speech talking about Flanagan. Without confirming it with Tracy, an overzealous MGM publicity representative announces incorrectly that Tracy is donating his Oscar to Flanagan. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hastily strikes another inscription so Tracy keeps his statuette and Boys Town gets one as well. A sequel also starring Tracy and Rooney, Men of Boys Town, is released in 1941.

Flanagan himself appears in a separate 1938 MGM short, The City of Little Men, promoting Boys Town and giving a tour of its facilities. The actor Stephen McNally plays Flanagan in a 1957 episode of the ABC religion anthology series, Crossroads.

Flanagan receives many awards for his work with the delinquent and homeless boys. Pope Pius XI names him a Domestic Prelate with the title Right Reverend Monsignor in 1937. He serves on several committees and boards dealing with the welfare of children and is the author of articles on child welfare. Internationally known, he travels to the Republic of Ireland in 1946, where he is appalled by the children’s institutions there, calling them “a national disgrace.” When his observations are published after returning to Omaha, instead of improving the horrid conditions, vicious attacks are leveled against him in the Irish print media and the Oireachtas. He is invited by General Douglas MacArthur to Japan and Korea in 1947 to advise on child welfare, as well as to Austria and Germany in 1948. While in Berlin, Germany, he dies of a heart attack on May 15, 1948. He is interred at Dowd Memorial Chapel of the Immaculate Conception Parish in Boys Town, Nebraska.

In 1986, the United States Postal Service issues a 4¢ Great Americans series postage stamp honoring Flanagan. He is a member of the Nebraska Hall of Fame.

On February 25, 2012, the Catholic Archdiocese of Omaha, Nebraska opens the canonization process of Flanagan. At a March 17, 2012 prayer service at Boys Town’s Immaculate Conception Church, he is given the title “Servant of God,” the first of three titles bestowed before canonization as a Catholic saint. The investigation is completed in June 2015 and the results forwarded to the Vatican. If the Vatican approves the local findings, Flanagan will be declared venerable. The next steps will be beatification and canonization.

There is a portrait statue dedicated to Fr. Edward J. Flanagan in Ballymoe, County Galway.


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Death of Sister Catherine McAuley, Founder of the Sisters of Mercy

Catherine Elizabeth McAuley, Irish religious sister who founds the Sisters of Mercy in 1831, dies in Dublin on November 11, 1841. The Sisters of Mercy has always been associated with teaching, especially in Ireland, where the sisters teach Catholics, and at times Protestants, at a time when education is mainly reserved for members of the established Church of Ireland.

McAuley is born on September 29, 1778, at Stormestown House in Dublin to James and Elinor (née Conway) McAuley. Her father dies in 1783 when she is five and her mother dies in 1798. She first goes to live with a maternal uncle, Owen Conway, and later joins her brother James and sister Mary at the home of William Armstrong, a Protestant relative on her mother’s side. In 1803, she becomes the household manager and companion of William and Catherine Callaghan, an elderly, childless, and wealthy Protestant couple and friends of the Armstrongs, at their estate in Coolock, a village northeast of Dublin. For 20 years she gives catechetical instruction to the household servants and the poor village children. Catherine Callaghan, who is raised in the Quaker tradition, dies in 1819. When William Callaghan dies in 1822, McAuley becomes the sole residuary legatee of their estate.

McAuley inherits a considerable fortune and chooses to use it to build a house where she and other compassionate women can take in homeless women and children to provide care and education for them. A location is selected at the junction of Lower Baggot Street and Herbert Street in Dublin, and in June 1824, the cornerstone is laid by the Rev. Dr Blake. As it is being refurbished, she studies current educational methods in preparation for her new endeavour. On the feast of Our Lady of Mercy, September 24, 1827, the new institution for destitute women, orphans, and schools for the poor is opened and McAuley, with two companions, undertake its management.

For three years, McAuley and her companions continue their work as lay women. She never intends to found a community of religious women. Her initial intention is to assemble a lay corps of Catholic social workers. In 1828 Archbishop of Dublin Daniel Murray permits the staff of the institute to assume a distinctive dress and to publicly visit the sick. The uniform adopted is a black dress and cape of the same material reaching to the belt, a white collar and a lace cap and veil – such a costume as is now worn by the postulants of the congregation. In the same year the archbishop desires McAuley to choose some name by which the little community might be known, and she chooses that of “Sisters of Mercy,” having the design of making the works of mercy the distinctive feature of the institute.

McAuley is desirous that the members should combine with the silence and prayer of the Carmelites, with the active labours of a Sister of Charity. The position of the institute is anomalous, its members are not bound by vows nor are they restrained by rules. The clergy and people of the church of the time, however, are not supportive of groups of laywomen working independently of church structures. The main concern is for the stability and continuity of the works of mercy which the women had taken on. Should any of them get married or lose interest, the poor and the orphans whom they are caring for would then be at a loss.

McAuley’s clerical mentor urges her to form a religious institute. Along with two other women, Mary Ann Doyle and Mary Elizabeth Harley, she enters the novitiate of the Presentation Sisters to formally prepare for life as women religious in September 1830. On December 12, 1831, they profess vows and return to the House of Mercy. The Sisters of Mercy consider December 12, 1831, as the day of their founding as a religious community. Archbishop Murray assists McAuley in founding the Sisters of Mercy and professes the first three members. He then appoints her Mother Superior.

Between 1831 and 1841 McAuley founds additional Convents in Tullamore, Charleville, Cork, Carlow, Galway, Limerick, Birr, Bermondsey and Birmingham and branch houses in Kingstown and Booterstown. A cholera epidemic hits Dublin in 1832, and she agrees to staff a cholera hospital on Townsend Street.

The rule of the Sisters of Mercy is formally confirmed by Pope Gregory XVI on June 6, 1841. McAuley lives only ten years as a Sister of Mercy, Sister Mary Catherine.

McAuley dies of tuberculosis at the age of sixty-three on November 11, 1841, at Baggot Street. She is buried at Baggot Street Cemetery. At the time of her death, there are 100 Sisters of Mercy in ten foundations. Shortly thereafter, small groups of sisters leave Ireland to establish new foundations on the east and west coasts of the United States, in Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina.

Total worldwide membership consists of about 5,500 Sisters of Mercy, 5,000 Associates, and close to half a million partners in ministry. The Mercy International Centre in Dublin is the international “home” of Mercy worldwide and the mercyworld.org website is the virtual home.

In 1978, the cause for the beatification of the Servant of God Catherine McAuley is opened by Pope Paul VI. In 1990, upon recognition of her heroic virtues, Pope John Paul II declares her Venerable.


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Birth of Edel Quinn, Roman Catholic Lay Missionary

Edel Mary Quinn, Roman Catholic lay missionary and Envoy of the Legion of Mary to East Africa, is born in Castlemagner, County Cork, on September 14, 1907.

Quinn is the eldest child of bank official Charles Quinn and Louisa Burke Browne of County Clare. She is a great-granddaughter of William Quinn, a native of County Tyrone who settled in Tuam to build St. Mary’s Cathedral.

During Quinn’s childhood, her father’s career brought the family to various towns in Ireland, including Tralee, County Kerry, where a plaque is unveiled in May 2009 at Bank of Ireland House in Denny Street commemorating her residence there between 1921 and 1924. She attends the Presentation Convent in the town between 1921-1925.

Quinn feels a call to religious life at a young age. She wishes to join the Poor Clares but is prevented by advanced tuberculosis. After spending eighteen months in a sanatorium, her condition unchanged, she decides to become active in the Legion of Mary, which she joins in Dublin at the age of 20. She gives herself completely to its work in the form of helping the poor in the slums of Dublin.

In 1936, at the age of 29 and dying of tuberculosis, Quinn becomes a Legion of Mary Envoy, a very active missionary to East and Central Africa, departing in December 1936 for Mombasa. She settles in Nairobi having been told by Bishop Heffernan that this is the most convenient base for her work. By the outbreak of World War II, she is working as far off as Dar es Salaam and Mauritius. In 1941, she is admitted to a sanatorium near Johannesburg. Fighting her illness, in seven and a half years she establishes hundreds of Legion branches and councils in today’s Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, and Mauritius. John Joseph “J.J.” McCarthy, later Bishop of Zanzibar and Archbishop of Nairobi, writes of her:

“Miss Quinn is an extraordinary individual; courageous, zealous and optimistic. She wanders around in a dilapidated Ford, having for sole companion an African driver. When she returns home, she will be qualified to speak about the Missions and Missionaries, having really more experience than any single Missionary I know.”

All this time Quinn’s health is never good, and in 1943 she takes a turn for the worse, dying in Nairobi, Kenya of tuberculosis on May 12, 1944. She is buried there in the Missionaries’ Cemetery.

The cause for her beatification is introduced in 1956. She is declared venerable by Pope John Paul II on December 15, 1994, since when the campaign for her beatification has continued.