Holy Heroes · By country
Candidates for sainthood and witnesses of faith from Ireland
Holy men and women from Ireland on MyHolyHero: those whose cause for beatification and canonization is open, and witnesses of faith for whom no cause has been opened.
Each profile gives a short account of the person's life, the exact stage of their cause in the Catholic Church and a prayer for private devotion. We keep two groups clearly apart: people with an open cause for beatification and canonization, and witnesses of faith for whom no cause has been opened.
To understand what each title means (Servant of God, Venerable, Blessed), read our guide to how canonization works, or browse all the heroes by stage of the cause.
Open causes for canonization
Blessed John Sullivan, S.J.
Dublin-born Jesuit, son of a Church of Ireland Lord Chancellor, convert to Catholicism and teacher at Clongowes Wood College, beatified in Ireland in 2017.
Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice
Irish merchant turned religious founder who, after widowhood, opened free schools for the poor and established the Christian Brothers and Presentation Brothers.
Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy (Tadhg Mac Cárthaigh)
Fifteenth-century Irish bishop who, prevented by politics from ever ruling his sees of Ross and Cork, died on pilgrimage at Ivrea; the 'White Martyr of Munster'.
Patrick Joseph Peyton, C.S.C.
Irish-born Holy Cross priest, known as the Rosary Priest, who led the Family Rosary Crusade and coined 'The family that prays together stays together.'
Edel Mary Quinn
Irish Legion of Mary envoy to East and Central Africa, who founded hundreds of praesidia across the continent while dying slowly of tuberculosis.
Matthew 'Matt' Talbot
Dublin labourer who broke a sixteen-year addiction to alcohol and lived forty years of hidden penance, prayer and quiet charity until his death in 1925.
Venerable Nano Nagle (Honora Nagle)
Eighteenth-century Irish foundress who defied the Penal Laws to open clandestine schools for poor Catholic children in Cork and founded the Presentation Sisters.
Venerable Catherine McAuley, R.S.M.
Dublin laywoman who inherited a fortune and built a House of Mercy for poor women and children, founding the Sisters of Mercy in 1831 — now one of the largest women's congregations in the world.
Frank Duff
Dublin civil servant and lay Catholic who founded the Legion of Mary in 1921, growing it into a worldwide apostolate of millions of evangelising laity.
Father William Joseph Gabriel Doyle, S.J.
Irish Jesuit and decorated World War I chaplain, killed at Passchendaele in 1917 while giving last rites to wounded soldiers under heavy shellfire.
Alphonsus 'Alfie' Lambe
Young Irish Legion of Mary envoy to South America, who established Legion praesidia across five nations before dying in Buenos Aires at twenty-six.
Witnesses of faith · no open cause
No cause for beatification has been opened for the people below. They are not candidates for canonization; they are remembered here for the witness of their lives.
Archdeacon Bartholomew Cavanagh
Parish Priest of Knock during the 1879 apparition, who chronicled hundreds of cures and helped establish Knock as Ireland's foremost Marian shrine.
Canon James O'Neill
Belfast canon and parish priest who founded the Knights of Saint Columbanus in 1915 to defend and promote Catholic faith, education and culture in Ireland.
Cardinal John Francis D'Alton
Cardinal Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland (1946-1963), classics scholar and Maynooth president who led the Irish Church through the post-war era and the opening of Vatican II.
Monsignor James Horan
Visionary Parish Priest of Knock who built the Basilica, hosted Pope John Paul II in 1979 and dreamed Knock Airport into existence on a 'foggy boggy site' in west Mayo.
Ellen Organ, 'Little Nellie of Holy God'
Irish child mystic of Cork who, dying of tuberculosis at age four, received Holy Communion before age seven; her story moved Pius X to lower the age for First Communion in 1910.
Father Michael Ross SDB
Cork-born Salesian priest who pioneered Catholic media in Ireland, founding Radio Maria Ireland and serving as director of the Divine Mercy Conference and the Legion of Mary.
Sister Ruth Maria O'Callaghan
Dublin-born Servant Sister of the Home of the Mother who led the order's first Irish community in Roscommon and offered her cancer suffering for the Church before her death at 43.
Daniel O'Connell
Kerry-born lawyer and statesman known as 'The Liberator', whose peaceful campaign won Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and reshaped the place of Catholics in the British Isles.
Father Patrick Murray CSsR
Irish Redemptorist who served as Superior General of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer for thirty-eight years (1909-1947), the longest tenure in the order's history.
Mary Beirne (later Mary O'Connell)
The principal eyewitness of the 1879 Knock apparition; her detailed deposition described the three figures, the altar, the Lamb and cross. She lived until 1936 and reaffirmed her testimony on her deathbed.
Patrick Hill
Schoolboy and one of the principal witnesses of the 1879 Knock apparition; his deposition is among the most detailed and is regularly quoted in accounts of what the villagers saw.
Liam Coyne
Irish solicitor and district justice who, with his wife Judy, founded the Knock Shrine Society in 1935 to promote and organise pilgrimage at the Marian shrine in County Mayo.
Judy Coyne (Dame Judy Coyne)
Irish lay Catholic and co-founder of the Knock Shrine Society; the first Irish woman ever made a Dame of the Order of St Sylvester for her work at Knock.
Jim Browne
Irish lay evangelist from Killadoon, County Mayo, who turned a personal conversion at Medjugorje into thirty years of leading others there. Founder of the Ark of Mir apostolate.
Father Patrick Aloysius Murray
Irish Catholic priest and dogmatic theologian who taught at St Patrick's College, Maynooth, defending papal authority and ecclesiology before Vatican I.
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