‘They speak his name with tears’

An Irish Jesuit First World War chaplain who was born 150 years ago had his cause for canonisation opened last year. President of the Father Willie Doyle Association, Dr Patrick Kenny, introduces the priest from whom ‘virtue went forth’.

A certain Roman Catholic chaplain... lies in a soldier’s grave in that sinister plain beyond Ypres. He went forward and back over the battle field with bullets whining about him, seeking out the dying and kneeling in the mud beside them to give them Absolution, walking with death with a smile on his face, watched by his men with reverence and a kind of awe until a shell burst near him and he was killed... They remember him as a saint – they speak his name with tears.

Appearing in the Daily Express on 22 August 1917, these words describe the life and death of the World War I chaplain Fr Willie Doyle SJ, who was killed six days previously while attempting to assist two officers stranded in ‘no man’s land’.

William Doyle was born on 3 March 1873 in Dalkey, County Dublin, Ireland. He was the youngest of seven children born into comfortable circumstances. While the family enjoyed the assistance of servants in the home, young Willie was known to go out of his way to help them, getting up before they were awake to wash the dishes or light the fire. As he grew, he also sought out the local poor, often giving food and money to them or even decorating and painting their houses for free.

Educated at Ratcliffe College in Leicestershire from the age of eleven to seventeen, he entered the Jesuits when he turned eighteen. His sixteen years in formation included time teaching and working with students in both Belvedere College and Clongowes Wood College in Ireland, as well as a period of study in Stonyhurst. His time as a novice was marked by a fire in the novitiate which resulted in what is recorded as a ‘complete nervous breakdown’. His story is one of remarkable transformation –accepted back to the novitiate, he never again suffered mental health problems, and twenty years later he was awarded medals for his heroism in the trenches of World War 1.

He was ordained a priest on 28 July 1907 alongside Fr John Sullivan SJ, who was beatified in 2013. Most of his priesthood was spent on the Jesuit mission team, preaching missions across Ireland, England and Scotland. He often went to the ‘peripheries’ to seek those distanced from the Church. He was known to wait on the docks for sailors arriving into port late at night or to go out to meet factory workers on their way to work at dawn. He seems to have had a powerful effect on all he met. One nun described him as ‘more like an angel than a man’, whilst another said that, ‘it was as if, like his master, virtue went forth from him.’

He was particularly devoted to helping ordinary working men and was a pioneer in the effort to establish a retreat house for workers in Ireland. He was a renowned retreat master and spiritual director as well as a promoter of vocations whose pamphlets on the topic sold in the tens of thousands. He also applied his great organisational and fundraising skills to the task of raising money for the African missions, and was instrumental in founding the Poor Clare convent in Cork City.

But it was his ministry as a chaplain in World War I that made Fr Doyle famous.

Fr Doyle repeatedly risked his life, heading into no man’s land to aid the wounded and dying. Eventually his own time came. On 16 August 1917, while rushing to assist two wounded soldiers, he was struck by a shell and killed. The soldiers were Anglicans from Ulster: Fr Doyle died as an ecumenical martyr of charity.

Fr Doyle’s death was a stunning loss to his men and, when the details of his heroism and holiness were made known, devotion to him spread rapidly around the world. By the early 1930s the Irish Jesuit Province had received reports of over 6,000 alleged healings and over 50,000 letters enquiring about the possibility of a canonisation cause. At the time priority was given to the cause of Fr John Sullivan, and the possibility of a cause for Fr Doyle was left in the hands of providence.

Fr Doyle was always to be found with his men, suffering along with them. Living in cold and mud, or suffering from searing heat, surrounded by death and with rats crawling over him at night, Fr Doyle seems always to have remained cheerful in the midst of extreme deprivation. As one officer noted:

‘Fr Doyle never rests. Night and day he is with us. He finds a dying or dead man, does all, comes back smiling, makes a little cross and goes out to bury him and then begins all over again.’

Fr Doyle’s pastoral care was universal. He assisted wounded German prisoners, as well as those of any religion or none. On one occasion a wounded Protestant soldier told him: ‘Father, I don’t belong to your flock’, to which Fr Doyle responded: ‘No, but you belong to my God.’

His care for others cost him dearly at times. On one occasion, the medical doctor with whom he worked was sick, and there was no dry or warm spot for him to him to sleep in the dugout. Fr Doyle lay face down on the ground to allow the doctor to sleep on his back so that at least one of them had a dry spot on which to rest.

In 2020, following several years of study and discernment, the Father Willie Doyle Association was formed in Ireland with a view to promoting a cause for Fr Doyle. Recognised as a private association of the faithful, and with the support of the Irish Jesuit Province, it is now the official actor for Fr Doyle’s canonisation cause which was formally opened in the Diocese of Meath in November 2022. It was the first cause to be opened in Ireland in over 25 years, and the first time a lay association has been formed in Ireland to sponsor a canonisation cause formally.

The association maintains an active website that is updated daily with quotations from Fr Doyle’s writings, distributes prayer cards and brochures globally, and provides speakers for parishes, prayer groups or conferences that are interested in learning more about the attractive spirit and life of Fr Willie Doyle.

Find Out More

Read To Raise the Fallen, a collection of Fr Doyle’s war letters and spiritual writings, edited by Dr Patrick Kenny and published by Veritas (Ireland) and Ignatius Press (United States); and visit www.williedoyle.org Meet more Jesuit First World War chaplains at jesuitarchives.co.uk/ ww1-chaplains