Fr Gabriel Harty OP Ireland’s very own ‘Rosary priest’ has died, aged 97.
Fr Gabriel Harty OP, the senior member of Ireland’s Dominican province, passed away on Thursday in Drogheda’s Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital.
Known as ‘the Rosary Priest of Ireland’, Fr Harty was known for his decades of promoting the Rosary through preaching, missions and publication of books, pamphlets and CDs. He spent several decades as the director of Ireland’s Rosary Apostolate and Confraternity, and is the author of The Riches of the Rosary and a memoir, Make the Wild Roses Bloom.
Chaplain
Fr Harty had been based in Dundalk, which he first visited in 1954 when he blessed a statue of Mary for staff at PJ Carrolls during the Marian year. A popular figure in the town, where he was known as ‘Fr Gus’, he was chaplain to St Malachy’s Girls NS, with one former pupil writing to Pope Francis to tell him of the priest’s work. The Pope subsequently sent him a set of Rosary beads he had blessed.
Fr Harty was buried on Monday in Dundalk’s St Patrick’s Cemetery.