Bishops and clergy in Ireland have made the closing case for a First World War priest, Fr Willie Doyle, to become a Saint.
During an address to the Closing Session of the Diocesan Inquiry into the Cause for the Beatification and Canonisation of Fr Doyle, Rt Rev Tom Deenihan, the Bishop of Meath said that “despite the passing of over one hundred years since his death, many have felt that Fr Doyle was another of those who, by his life and example, displayed heroic virtue: an Irish, Catholic and Jesuit priest, sacrificing his life on the battlefield as a British Army Chaplain, to bring comfort to soldiers of all denominations”.
Bishop Tom was speaking in front of members of Fr Doyle’s family, representatives of the Irish and British armies, including the Defence Attaché to the British Ambassador and bishops, clergy and members of the Jesuit Order.
For the last three years of his life, Fr Doyle, who was born in 1873, was a military chaplain whose dedication to his flock and his courage in the face of danger have been described as “simply outstanding”. He was killed in action in 1917 while serving as a military chaplain to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers at the Battle of Passchendaele. At some time in the late afternoon a group of soldiers lead by two Lieutenants, got into trouble beyond the front line, and Fr Doyle ran to assist them. It seems that Fr Doyle and the two officers were about to take shelter when they were hit by a German shell and killed. His body was never recovered.
In a separate address yesterday, Fr Conor McDonough spoke of how the chaplain’s soldiers had testified to his character during and after the war. One Ulster Protestant officer said: “Fr Doyle never rests. Night and day he is with us. He finds a dying or dead man, does all, comes back smiling, makes a little cross and goes out to bury him and then begins all over again.”
Another soldier, a Belfast Presbyterian, wrote that “he didn’t know the meaning of fear and he didn’t know what bigotry was. He was as ready to risk his life to take a drop of water to a wounded Protestant as to assist men of his own faith.”
A war correspondent, who interviewed Fr Doyle’s comrades, described his final hours in the Battle of Langemark: “He went forward and back on the battlefield, with bullets whining about him, seeking out the dying and kneeling in the mud beside them to give the Absolution, walking with death with a smile on his face, watched by his men with reverence and a kind of awe, until a shell burst near him and he was killed. His familiar figure was seen and welcomed by hundreds of Irishmen who lay in that bloody place. Each time he came back across the field he was begged to remain in comparative safety. Smilingly he shook his head and went again into the storm. He had been with his boys through other times of stress, and he would not desert them in their agony. They remember him as a Saint – they speak his name with tears.”
Fr Doyle was awarded the Military Cross for his bravery at the 1916 Battle of the Somme, and nominated for both the Distinguished Service Order and Victoria Cross.
In August 2022, the Father Willie Doyle Association was established to petition the Catholic Church to introduce a cause for his canonisation. That process now heads to Rome.