Alphonsus 'Alfie' Lambe

Life

Alphonsus Lambe — known affectionately as Alfie — was born in Tullamore, County Offaly, on 24 June 1932, the feast of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist, on the same day the 31st International Eucharistic Congress opened in Dublin. He was the seventh of ten children of James Lambe, a labourer, and Annie Donegan.

From childhood he was drawn to religious life and at sixteen entered the novitiate of the Irish Christian Brothers. After two years, recurrent fainting attacks and chronic poor health forced him to leave. Back in Tullamore he joined the Legion of Mary in 1949 and quickly distinguished himself by zeal, recruiting and door-to-door evangelisation.

In 1953 Frank Duff chose him, despite his youth and frail health, to become the Legion's envoy to South America. With Seamus Grace he left Dublin on 16 July 1953 for Bogotá. Over the next five and a half years he travelled almost ceaselessly through Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile and especially Argentina. He learned Spanish and Portuguese fluently within months and founded thousands of praesidia, curiae and senatus, drawing in laity from every social class.

His health, however, gave way. Suffering from undiagnosed stomach cancer for months, he collapsed and was admitted to the British Hospital in Buenos Aires. He died on 21 January 1959, aged twenty-six, with rosary in hand. His funeral filled the streets of Buenos Aires; he was interred in the vault of the Irish Christian Brothers at the Recoleta Cemetery.

The Archdiocese of Buenos Aires opened his cause in 1978. The diocesan phase closed on 26 March 2015 and the dossier passed to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome. In January 2020 Monsignor Brosel Gavila José Jaime was appointed Relator, and work on the Positio began. He holds the title Servant of God.