Father Patrick Murray CSsR

Life

Patrick Murray was born on 24 November 1865 at Termon, in the north of Ireland, into a devout Catholic farming family. As a young man he was drawn to the missionary preaching of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, the order founded by Saint Alphonsus Liguori for the evangelisation of the poor and the abandoned. He entered the Redemptorist novitiate and made his religious profession on 23 October 1889.

After ordination he ministered as a parish mission preacher and confessor in Ireland and Britain, two countries where the Redemptorist parish mission was a defining feature of nineteenth-century Catholic revival. His gifts of judgement, prudence and quiet authority were quickly recognised, and he was elected Provincial Superior of the Irish Province of the Redemptorists.

On 1 May 1909, at the General Chapter held in Rome, the assembled delegates elected him Rector Major, that is, Superior General of the entire congregation worldwide. He was the first Irishman ever to hold the office. His generalate, which would last almost thirty-eight years and run until 25 April 1947, is the longest in the history of the Redemptorists. He governed the order through both World Wars, the Russian Revolution, the suppression of religious life in several European countries, the worldwide expansion of Redemptorist missions in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and the canonisation of his confrère Saint Gerard Majella in 1904 and Saint Clement Maria Hofbauer in 1909.

After resigning his office in 1947, exhausted by the long years of governance, he returned to Ireland and retired to the Redemptorist house at Mount Saint Alphonsus in Limerick, where he lived in prayerful retirement for another twelve years.

He died at Limerick on 4 June 1959, aged ninety-three, and was buried in the Redemptorist plot there.