Irish priest killed in first World War put forward for canonisation

A campaign has begun to have Fr Willie Doyle SJ made a saint more than a century after he died in the mud of Flanders during the first World War.

Should the campaign be successful, Fr Doyle will be only the second Irish person in the last 500 years to be canonised since St Oliver Plunkett was made a saint in 1975.

Fr Doyle, a chaplain to the mainly Catholic 16th (Irish) Division, went into a shell-hole to give the last rites to three men from the Royal Dublin Fusiliers during the Battle of Passchendaele on August 16th, 1917.

He went to the assistance of two officers who were dying, Second Lieut Arthur Green from Co Down and Second Lieut Charles Marlow, a former captain of the King’s Hospital School cricket team.

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According to one account, Fr Doyle was anointing one of the men when a shell burst among them. It also killed Pte John Meehan, who had taken shelter there.

The process of canonisation has been started by the Bishop of Meath, Thomas Deenihan, following a request by Fr John Hogan, a priest in the diocese.

Fr Doyle’s name is on the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing which remembers 35,000 men who were killed in the Battle of Passchendaele and have no known grave. The joint attack by the 16th (Irish) Division and the 36th (Ulster) Division was a total disaster and led to the combined deaths of 1,200 men from both divisions, one of the worst days for the Irish in the war.

Fr Doyle wrote eloquently of the grief caused by the war in Irish households. “My poor brave boys. They are lying now out on the battlefield: some in a little grave dug and blessed by their chaplain, who love them all as if they were his own children; others stiff and stark with staring eyes, hidden in a shell-hole where they had crept to die; while perhaps in some far-off thatched cabin an anxious mother sits listening for the well-known step and voice which will never gladden her heart again.”

Death was not the end of the Fr Doyle story. In the 1920s, a former Jesuit priest and polymath, Prof Alfred O’Rahilly, published a bestselling biography of Fr Doyle which was translated into many languages. Readers were captivated by Fr Doyle’s intense spirituality, his life of prayer and penance and his selflessness in the service of others. Thousands testified to his intercession in some aspect of their lives. An intense campaign to have him canonised took place in the 1920s and 1930s, but foundered when his Jesuit order would not support it.

By the early 1930s, more than 50,000 letters testifying to devotion to him were received, over 6,000 of which alleged favours and healings through his intercession.

Fr Doyle’s case has been revived in recent years with the publication of Dr Pat Kenny’s book To Raise the Fallen: The War Letters, Prayers and Spiritual Writings of Fr Willie Doyle in 2017.

Fr Hogan will act as postulator for Fr Doyle. The postulator is the person who makes the case for canonisation.

He said Fr Doyle’s example was needed in Ireland today as he attempted to give spiritual succour to Anglican soldiers too. He also offered his life as reparation for the sins of priests.

The beatification and canonisation cause for the Servant of God Fr Willie Doyle will be formally opened at Vespers in the Cathedral of Christ the King, Mullingar, Co Westmeath on November 20th.

There will need to be a verified miracle before he is declared blessed and a verified miracle afterwards before he can be canonised. The process of canonisation can take years, decades or even centuries.