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Surprising turnout for saint’s relics

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By Andrew Bushe

DUBLIN — The public response to the relics of St. Therese of Lisieux during an 80-day tour earlier this year, when as many as 3 million turned out to venerate them, caught the organizers by surprise.

Tour coordinator Fr. Joseph Linus Ryan, says in a book to be published on Oct. 25 that the sheer extent of the extraordinary scenes of devotion, not just at the 75 official venues but along the route as well, had not be anticipated.

“When we returned to Lisieux with the Relics on July 3, the rector, Pere Raymond Zambelli, informed us that the Irish veneration figures — almost 75 percent of the total population — were the highest of any country to date,” Ryan said.

The Carmelite priest said the veneration continued “without any break, day or night, through every moment of the Irish tour” from when it started in Rosslare on Easter Sunday.

The relics of St. Therese, who is also known as “The Little Flower” and is associated with rose petals, broke all records and the visit is regarded by Fr. Ryan as one of the “most extraordinary events in the entire history of the Irish church.”

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The bishop of Ferns, Dr. Brendan Comiskey describes the visit as a “Rose Revolution.”

The book, “St. Therese in Ireland, Official Diary of the Irish Visit, April-July 2001,” says the “Theresemobile” that carried the 400-pound reliquary met scenes straight out the New Testament as it traveled the country.

“Patients from local hospitals, convalescent homes and nursing homes were brought in wheelchairs or carried in stretchers and placed near the side of the road as the Reliquary passed by,” the book says. “It was essentially a People’s Movement, at its very best.”

People came at the rate of 4,000 an hour and queues at midnight outside churches stretched back six deep.

Some of the biggest crowds were at venues north of the border. More than 120,000 visited the relics during a three-day stay in Belfast.

For the first time in 30 years of the Troubles, the Holy Cross Passionist Church in Ardoyne remained open all night during the visit.

A Carmelite nun, St. Therese died of tuberculosis in 1887 at the age of 24. She was one of five sisters who became nuns and was canonized in 1925. The Pope proclaimed her a doctor of the church on the centenary of her death, the youngest of the 33 saints to hold that title.

Before coming to Ireland, the relics had traveled thousands of miles through Russia, Brazil, Argentina, Vietnam, the US and Mexico.

Tours of Africa and Australia are planned.

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