Chai Brady
Irish film director Campbell Miller presents Pope Francis with a copy of the film Bravery Under Fire during last week's General Audience in St Peter’s Square in the Vatican. An Irish chaplain to the British army during World War I has been described as “imitating Christ” when he was bravely killed while administering Last Rites to a soldier.
Speaking ahead of the screening of a film last week in the Vatican detailing Fr Willie Doyle SJ’s life, directed by Campbell Miller from Newcastle in Down, Armagh’s Archbishop Eamon Martin said Irish Catholics in WWI are not “adequately remembered”.
Bravery Under Fire depicts Fr Doyle’s youth and family life up to his death by a bomb in No Man’s Land while trying to help fallen soldiers.
“In recent years we’ve been bringing to light the stories of thousands of Catholics and Protestants from towns and villages all over Ireland who died in the First World War,” said Archbishop Martin.
He said that a fitting tribute “to the principles for which men and women from the island of Ireland died in both world wars would be permanent peace in Ireland”.
Addressing clergy and journalists at the screening, he said it would be difficult for those from outside Ireland to understand the significance of an Irish Catholic priest comforting “say a Protestant Loyalist Ulster man, when back at home they might have been at loggerheads: they were united in the gruesome reality of war”.
Director Campbell Miller said: “We can only imagine the horror experienced as Fr Doyle ministered in the mud, decay, destruction and terror of unexploded shells and incoming fire.”
He expressed the hope that Fr Doyle’s cause for sainthood will be considered.