Pope puts Irish-born Rosary Priest on path to sainthood

Warm welcome for Peyton nomination

A step to sainthood for the famous Irish-born ‘Rosary Priest’ Fr Patrick Peyton has been welcomed by leading figures in promoting the Rosary in Ireland.

Mayo-born Fr Peyton moved to the USA at the age of 19 in 1928, joining the Congregation of Holy Cross, later founding the Family Rosary Crusade, organising massive Rosary rallies in cities around the world, and enlisting the help of Hollywood celebrities to promote the devotion across the mass media.

Fr Peyton died in 1992, and has now taken a step towards formal sainthood with Pope Francis having acknowledged his ‘heroic virtues’ and decreed him ‘venerable’.

“He was the great apostle of the family Rosary,” Fr John Walsh OP, promoter of the Rosary in Ireland’s Rosary Apostolate, told The Irish Catholic. “He was a powerful speaker among the Irish diaspora – he was the religious John F. Kennedy,” he said.

Emphasis

Fr Peyton’s emphasis on the family Rosary, where a mother and father would lead their families in saying the Rosary at home, offers a perfect model of a family as a domestic church, Fr Walsh said, suggesting that this could be worth emulating in this year when Ireland will host the World Meeting of Families.

“It has to start somewhere, and Fr Peyton was very strong on the mother and the father saying the Rosary in the home – the home is the school of prayer,” he said.

Fr Peyton’s elevation seems especially relevant ahead of the Church family gathering, according to Indiana-born Fr Stephen Gibson, who heads the Fr Peyton Centre in Attymass, Co. Mayo.

“It certainly gives us the impression that people are listening to the message that he’s trying to teach, especially in this year here in Ireland when the Pope is coming and celebrating the year of the Family,” he said.

“Fr Peyton’s famous phrases were ‘the family that prays together stays together’ and ‘a world at prayer is a world at peace’, so putting those two phrases and ideas together certainly fits in very well with the theme for the visit of the Pope.”

A member of Fr Peyton’s Holy Cross community, and a collaborator of Fr Peyton in the last years of his life, Fr Gibson said locals in Attymass are “delighted” by the development, as are members of the Congregation of the Holy Cross.

Giant

“He’s been a giant within our community for as long as I can remember, and we’re just delighted that people are finally recognising the fact that the man lived an extraordinary life and had a great devotion to the Blessed Virgin and was convinced that he could and should help people pray and be together as best they could,” he said.