Forgotten Treasure's

Mary Angeline Teresa McCrory, (21 January 1893 – 21 January 1984), was an Ulster-born immigrant to the United States. She was a Roman Catholic religious sister who worked as an advocate for the impoverished elderly, founding a new religious congregation for this purpose, the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm. Her cause for canonization has been opened, and her life has been acknowledged by the Holy See as one of heroic virtue. She is honored by the Catholic Church as venerable.

Julia Teresa Tallon was born at a farm in upstate New York 1867 as the seventh of the eight children to the Irish immigrants Peter Tallon (1827 – 21 September 1872) and Bridget Duffy (1827 – 8 August 1905). After the death of her first husband, Peter Tallon, she married John Bogan.

From 1879 she felt a strong call to enter the religious life as a sister despite the protests of her mother and siblings who did not approve of her decision. Her mother in particular – despite her deep faith – did not approve of her daughter's decision though was powerless to prevent this from materializing. Regardless of their opinion she joined the Holy Cross Sisters on 30 April 1887 and resided with the order at their convent until 1920 after the conclusion of World War I. Tallon founded the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate in New York on 15 August 1920 – an order that now operates in Nigeria and the Philippines.

Tallon suffered from disabling illnesses in the final two decades of her life and she hid the fact that she was sick though a few of her colleagues knew of this. On 10 February 1954 she was critically ill after suffering a fall in her room and spent the next month in pain. She died on the evening of 10 March 1954 just as her fellow sisters concluded the recitation of the rosary at her bedside.

Her remains were exhumed for canonical inspection and transferred on 16 October 2015 and then relocated for the final time on 9 December 2015.

Sister Moyra Martin (formerly Sister Alacoque) was born in Reaghstown, Ardee, Co. Louth in 1927. The second youngest in a family of six girls and four boys, she attended school locally and in the Saint Louis Convent in Co. Monaghan. She trained as a nurse after joining MMM in 1946. She began her training in the International Missionary Training Hospital (IMTH-now Our Lady of Lourdes) and completed it in Jervis Street Hospital in Dublin. In 1953, Moyra was assigned to Nigeria and was a ward sister in Saint Luke’s Hospital in Anua for five years.

She then completed her training as a nursing tutor in London. After several months as nurse tutor in the IMTH, she returned to Anua, where for six years she was principal tutor in Saint Luke’s Hospital and a member of the Nursing Council for Nigeria.

In early 1969 Sister Moyra returned to Ireland and was acting principal tutor in the IMTH. She also helped in our house in Clonmel for several months. After a short time as a nursing tutor in England, in 1971 she was assigned to Kenya and was a senior tutor in the Kenyatta Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya for three years. On one occasion she met and chatted with Prince Charles.

In 1974 Moyra  got the opportunity to study theology in Regina Mundi, Rome, which she appreciated very much. She was able to put it into good use over the years. In 1975 she was assigned as principal tutor to our hospital in Dareda, Tanzania.

Sister Moyra returned to Ireland in 1978. For a short time she was acting principal tutor in the Royal Eye and Ear Hospital in Dublin. At that time she underwent major surgery, which prevented her from returning to Africa. She then helped in the Apostolic delegation in London. Then she was assigned to mission awareness work, which she did for several years. She also did relief work as a nurse tutor in several hospitals around Ireland.

 In 1989 Moyra moved to Dublin. For a short time she did pastoral work in Virgin Mary Parish in Ballymun. In 1990 she was assigned to our house in Clonsilla, where for sixteen years she continued pastoral work in Mountview Parish. There she was also part of a team that gave An Síol (the seed) retreats to small groups, planting the seed of Christ in the hearts of the participants. She participated in the adult education programme in the parish, giving lectures in theology, scripture and related topics.

Sister Moyra moved to our Motherhouse in Beechgrove, Drogheda, in 2006, where she was sacristan and helped with other duties. She helped to prepare children for baptism and First Communion and engaged in community activities.

Over the years, her health deteriorated gradually, and in July 2016 she moved to Áras Mhuire for nursing care. She died there peacefully on 13 August 2018.

Moyra was a deeply spiritual person. While her demeanour could be serious and her attention to detail exact, she could also bring great enjoyment. She was an avid reader from an early age, so much so that her mother described her as ‘the lady of the family’, who preferred to bury her head in books rather than do more practical work! In her later years, she continued to feed her love of literature and knowledge and was able to quote passages of poems even up to the last weeks of her life. When she was sent to study to be a tutor she discovered her love for and skill in teaching. Her students appreciated her humour and attention to detail. She loved her students and enjoyed their sense of fun.

She loved her family and kept in contact with her many nieces, nephews, grand-nieces and grand-nephews in Ireland, the UK and Canada, who were attentive to the end.

Martin, Sr. Moyra

Born Joseph Ignatius Shanahan on 6 June 1871 in Glankeen, Borrisoleigh, County Tipperary, Ireland. He joined the Holy Ghost Order in Beauvais, France in 1886, where his uncle Pat Walsh (Brother Adelm) had also joined the Holy Ghost Fathers. He returned to Ireland, to Rockwell College, where he served as prefect and dean of studies. He was ordained in 1900 in Blackrock College, and went to Nigeria in 1902.

He was instrumental in the setting up of the Kiltegan Fathers when in 1920, following his ordination in Maynooth as Bishop for Southern Nigeria (then a British protectorate) he appealed to students in Maynooth College for missionaries to Nigeria and Africa.

In 1924 Bishop Shanahan founded a missionary society for women, the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary, in Killeshandra, County Cavan, Ireland.]

He returned to Africa, to Kenya to act as chaplain to the Carmelite Sisters in Nairobi in 1938. Bishop Shanahan died at Nairobi, Kenya, on Christmas Day 1943 aged 72 years, and was initially buried in the community cemetery in St Mary's School in Nairobi, Kenya. However, in January 1956 his remains were brought back to Nigeria for the "second burial" in the Cathedral Basilica of the Most Holy Trinity, Onitsha.

The Bishop Shanahan National School, in Templeogue, Dublin, developed on land donated by the Holy Ghost Fathers, is named in his honor. Shanahan University is a proposed university being developed in the diocese of Onitsha.

Born in Ireland, Father Edward J. Flanagan arrived in the United States in 1904. Eight years later, he was ordained a priest and assigned to the Diocese of Omaha. Father Flanagan became a social reformer and a true visionary for changing how America cared for its children and families, passionately speaking out and taking action on social issues that few dared to address. He believed that children had the right to be valued, to have the basic necessities of life and to be protected. He sought to close reformatories and other juvenile facilities where children were abused and literally held as prisoners. In 1917, after years of working with Omaha's homeless men, he opened Father Flanagans Boys Home℠, which later became Boys Town, and championed the causes of children across the country.

Father Flanagans Boys℠ Home accepted all boys, regardless of their race, creed or cultural background. The priest offered every child a new start in life, and he went to great lengths to seek out and bring in the neediest and most helpless - even boys who were in prison for serious crimes. Father Flanagan died in 1948, but his successors have faithfully carried on his legacy and the mission he started at Boys Town. Today, at 100 years strong, Boys Town still follows many of the same principles and practices that originated with Father Flanagan's vision.

Patrick Peyton, CSC (January 9, 1909 – June 3, 1992), also known as "The rosary priest", was an Irish-born Catholic priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross, and founder of the Family Rosary Crusade. He popularized the phrases "The family that prays together stays together" and "A world at prayer is a world at peace".

Peyton staged massive Rosary rallies in key cities of the world and extensively utilized mass communication, helped by world-recognized celebrities of Hollywood at that time, promoting his ministry of binding families through prayer under the Family Rosary. Peyton was a popular and charismatic figure in Latin America and the Philippines, where he promoted the Rosary and was known for his strong Irish accent.

His cause for canonization was opened in 2001 and Pope Francis declared him venerable on December 18, 2017.

The Servant of God, Alphonsus Lambe, (known as Alfie) was born in Tullamore, Ireland on the feast of St. John the Baptist, Friday, 24th June 1932, during the International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin.

Like St. John he was a precursor - the precursor of the Legion of Mary, which Pope Paul VI described as “the greatest movement which has been established for the good of souls since the era of the great religious orders”. After spending a period of his youth in the novitiate of the Irish Christian Brothers, which he had to leave because of delicate health, he found his vocation in the Legion of Mary, and was appointed Envoy in 1953. With Seamus Grace, he left for Bogota, Columbia on the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel 16th July of that year.

For almost six years he worked ceaselessly in promoting the Legion of Mary in Columbia, Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay and Brazil. After a short but grave illness he died in Buenos Aires on the feast of St. Agnes, 21st January 1959.

God had bestowed on him great natural gifts, a personality which attracted souls to the service and love of God, an infectious enthusiasm, and a facility for learning languages, which enabled him to rapidly attain fluency in Spanish and Portuguese.

During his years in South America he set up a great number of branches of the Legion of Mary, and trained a multitude in the apostolate of the Legion. His devotion to Mary was outstanding, and in contacts with Legionaries and others he explained and urged the practice of the True Devotion to Our Lady.

He is buried in the vault of the Irish Christian Brothers, in the Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires.

Edel Quinn was born in Kanturk, Co. Cork, Ireland on 14 September 1907. As a girl her ambition was to enter a contemplative convent, but she was prevented from doing so by ill-health. At the age of 20 she joined the Legion of Mary in Dublin and was an enthusiastic member.

In 1932 she became seriously ill and spent a long period in hospital. She resumed her activities in the Legion but for the remainder of her life was impaired due to that illness.

In 1936 Edel was appointed Legion of Mary Envoy to East Africa – to countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Mauritius. She encountered obstacles in this pioneering work and overcame them despite her poor health and harsh conditions. She had great faith in God’s love and a limitless trust in the maternal care of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Edel was gifted with a clear practical mind. She had notable organising ability, an indomitable will and a depth of warmth and human empathy. Her infectious joyousness of spirit never failed her. These qualities quickly won everyone to her side.

Although often working alone and in a state of ill-health and exhaustion, Edel established the Legion of Mary on a firm footing in the countries she visited – even as far as Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Hundreds of Legion branches and higher councils of the Legion were established – meaning that thousands of Africans were mobilised in the service of the Church.

After eight years of heroic labour, Edel died in Nairobi on 12 May 1944 where she is buried in the Missionaries’ Cemetery.

The Diocesan Process, the first step towards her beatification, was set in motion in 1957 by the Archbishop of Nairobi. She was declared Venerable on 15 December 1994 by Pope John Paul II.

The following extracts from her private notes give an indication of her spiritual life:

‘What boundless trust we should have in God’s love! We can never love too much; let us give utterly and not count the cost. God will respond to our faith in Him …’

‘Mary loves us because we are Christ’s legacy to her. Let us give ourselves completely to her to be made all His, to be consumed unceasingly, to be spent for Christ.’

Francis Michael Duff (7 June 1889 – 7 November 1980), known as Frank Duff, was known especially for bringing attention to the role of the Catholic Laity during the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church as well as for founding the Legion of Mary in his native city of Dublin, Ireland.

William Joseph Gabriel Doyle, SJ MC (3 March 1873 – 16 August 1917), better known as Willie Doyle, was an Irish Catholic priest who was killed in action while serving as a military chaplain to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers during the First World War. He is a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church.

Doyle was born in Dalkey, Ireland, the youngest of seven children of Hugh and Christine Doyle (née Byrne). He was educated at Ratcliffe College, Leicester. After reading St. Alphonsus' book Instructions and Consideration on the Religious State he was inspired to enter the priesthood. In 1891 he entered St Stanislaus Tullabeg College, and was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1907.[ From 1909 until 1915 he served on the Jesuit mission team, travelling around Ireland and Britain preaching parish missions and conducting retreats. In 1914 he was involved in the foundation of a Colettine Poor Clares monastery in Cork. He was an early member of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association and had been considered a future leader of the organization by its founder, Fr James Cullen.

John Sullivan (8 May 1861 – 19 February 1933) was an Irish Roman Catholic priest and a professed member of the Jesuits. Sullivan was known for his life of deep spiritual reflection and personal sacrifice; he is recognised for his dedicated work with the poor and afflicted and spent much of his time walking and riding his bike to visit those who were troubled or ill in the villages around Clongowes Wood College school where he taught from 1907 until his death.

From the 1920s onwards there were people who testified to his healing power despite the fact that he never claimed credit or causation for himself from these reported cases. Sullivan was known for his friendliness; his amiable nature was coupled with a somewhat shy temperament but one willing to aid those who needed it most. He was noted for his strong faith and for imposing multiple penances on himself such as eating little.

Sullivan had long been admired during his life and was known as a man of inspirational holiness which prompted for calls for his beatification; the cause later opened and would culminate on 7 November 2014 after Pope Francis confirmed his heroic virtue and named him as Venerable. The same pope approved a miraculous healing credited to his intercession on 26 April 2016. His beatification, the first ever to take place Ireland, took place in Dublin on 13 May 2017.

Blessed John Sullivan, Irish Jesuit priest

Ellen Organ (August 24, 1903 – February 2, 1908), known as Little Nellie of Holy God, was an Irish child, venerated by some in the Roman Catholic Church for her precocious spiritual awareness and alleged mystical life. Particularly dedicated to the Eucharist, the story of her life inspired Pope Pius X to admit young children to Holy Communion. In 1910, Pope Pius X issued the decree Quam singulari, which lowered the age of Holy Communion for children from 12 years to around 7.

Matt Talbot (2 May 1856 – 7 June 1925) was an Irish ascetic revered by many Catholics for his piety, charity and mortification of the flesh.

Talbot was a manual labourer. Though he lived alone for most of his life, Talbot did live with his mother for a time. His life would have gone unnoticed were it not for the cords and chains discovered on his body when he died suddenly on a Dublin street in 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.

Columba was born in Queen Street, Dublin, Ireland on April 1, 1858, into a large and very religious family; three of his sisters became nuns. His father, William Marmion was from Clane, Co. Kildare. His mother, Herminie Cordier was French, prompting his biographer, Dom Raymond Thibaut to remark: "He owes to his Celtic origin his penetrating intelligence, his lively imagination, his sensibility, his exuberance and his youthful spirit. The French blood which ran in his veins contributes to his clearness of mind, his habit of clear perception, his ease of exposition, and his uprightness of character. From the combination of the two he derives his constant gaiety and his generosity of heart with all the strength, devotion, and fine feeling which this noble quality implies." He was baptized with the name "Joseph Aloysius". From a very early age he was seemingly "consumed with some kind of inner fire or enthusiasm for the things of God." He was educated at the Jesuit Belvedere College in Dublin.

He entered the seminary at the age of 16. At the time he entered the seminary, his "faith was very strong";[ he perceived "something more than simple theoretical theses" in Catholic doctrine, in particular "that a man's love for God is measured by his love for his neighbor."

Margaret Aylward was born on 23 November 1810 in Thomas Street in Waterford to a wealthy merchant family. She was educated by the Ursuline nuns in Thurles, County Tipperary. After doing some charitable work in Waterford in her early years, Aylward joined her sister in the Sisters of Charity in 1834 as a novice. She left the noviciate in 1836 and returned to Waterford to continue her charity work in a secular role. Aylward again attempted to join a religious order in 1846 when she entered the Ursuline noviciate in Waterford, however she left after two months.

Frances Ball was born on 9 January 1794 in Dublin, Ireland to John and Mable Clare Bennet Ball; the youngest of six children. Her father was a wealthy silk weaver. Catholicism was still suppressed in Ireland at this time, although her brother Nicholas later became one of the first Roman Catholic Irish judges. She was therefore sent to England at the age of nine to the Bar Convent in York, which was an IBVM school, although Mary Ward was not acknowledged as the foundress. This sisterhood, which had long existed in York, was originally established on the continent in the seventeenth century by Mary Ward to supply the means of a sound religious and secular education to young ladies. Henry James Coleridge describes her as "a bright, quiet, high-spirited girl, fond of fun, and with much depth of character." In these times students did not return home for Easter, Christmas or summer holidays. They stayed at the school, and lived like religious people, until they left school, usually in their late teens.

In 1807, her eldest sister, Cecilia was professed at the Ursuline convent in Cork. Frances travelled from Dublin to Cork for the ceremony, where she met Mary Aikenhead. Cecilia Ball took the name of Sister Francis Regis and was within a few years made Superior of the convent in Cork.[3] Upon the death of her father in 1808, Frances returned to Dublin.[1] Frances was expected to make an admirable wife for the son and heir of some rich Catholic Dublin merchant family.

In June 1814, under the direction of Dr. Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, Frances returned to York and entered the novitiate of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. There she received her religious training, and made her profession in September 1816, taking, in religion, the name of Mary Teresa.

Mother Mary Frances Aikenhead (19 January 1787 – 22 July 1858) was born in Daunt's Square off Grand Parade, Cork, Ireland. Described as one of nursing's greatest leaders, she was the founder of the Catholic religious institute, the Religious Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of Charity of Australia, and of St. Vincent's Hospital in Dublin.

Catherine McAuley, RSM (29 September 1778 – 11 November 1841) was an Irish Catholic religious sister who founded the Sisters of Mercy in 1831.[1] The women's congregation has always been associated with teaching, especially in Ireland, where the sisters taught Catholics (and at times Protestants) at a time when education was mainly reserved for members of the established Church of Ireland

Edmund Ignatius Rice, F.P.M., C.F.C. (Irish: Éamonn Iognáid Rís; 1 June 1762 – 29 August 1844) was a Catholic missionary and educationalist. He was the founder of two religious institutes of religious brothers: the Congregation of Christian Brothers and the Presentation Brothers.

Rice was born in Ireland at a time when Catholics faced oppression under Penal Laws enforced by the British authorities, though reforms began in 1778 when he was a teenager. He forged a successful career in business and, after an accident that killed his wife and left his daughter disabled and with learning difficulties, thereafter devoted his life to the education of the poor.

Venerable Honora Nagle (c. 1718 – 26 April 1784), known informally as Nano Nagle, was a pioneer of Roman Catholic education in Irelanddespite legal prohibitions. She founded the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (PBVM), commonly known as the Presentation Sisters, now a worldwide Catholic institute of women religious. She was declared venerable in the Roman Catholic Church on 31 October 2013 by Pope Francis.

Throughout Ireland’s history it has been a beacon of faith to the world. Among its exports of the world’s finest whiskey, Ireland has supplied the world with great men and woman religious. This episode is about the ones that stayed and paid the ultimate price for their faith. This episode is devoted to the Irish Martyr’s. In this episode Fr. Gabriel Burke shares the brutal history these men and woman endured remaining faithful to the end.

To find out more about Fr. Gabriel Burke go to; www.castingthe.net