Gardai estimate upwards of 10,000 people visited the reliquary of St Therese of Lisieux in the 22 hours it spent at Dublin's Pro-Cathedral up to noon yesterday. About 3,000 attended services there between 9 a.m. and noon yesterday.
In addition, approximately 7,000 queued to see the relics in three separate queues from 2 p.m. until 6 p.m. on Monday afternoon and again between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. that evening, each taking between three and four hours to get inside the cathedral.
The reliquary was taken to the Carmelite convent in Malahide yesterday afternoon and will today be taken to the Legion of Mary hostel on Brunswick Street in Dublin. Tomorrow it will be at Terenure College and at Mountjoy prison on Friday.
Full details were published in yesterday's newspapers and can be found in most Catholic church porches. The reliquary will be in the Dublin area until May 16th, before being taken to Athboy, Co Meath, and from there to Mullingar.
A packed Pro-Cathedral heard Cardinal Desmond Connell celebrate Mass in the presence of the relics yesterday.
"From the earliest times, the Church celebrated Mass on the tombs of martyrs, seeing in their wounded bodies a witness to the sacrifice celebrated at Mass. When the time of persecution had passed, she reverenced the bodies of those of her children who, by their heroic dedication, manifested the fruits of that sacrifice in the holiness of their lives," he said.
The relics of the saints "bring us into their presence, as we recall the lives they lived in the body on earth, and direct our faith towards the life to which they looked forward in expectation of their final resurrection."
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