A "heroic" Irish priest who was killed in World War One while trying to help injured and dying soldiers will take a step towards potential sainthood on Sunday. Fr Willie Doyle served as a British Army chaplain during some of the bloodiest battles of the First World War, including the Somme, Messines and Passchendaele. The Dubliner was renowned for his courage under fire, repeatedly running into No Man's Land to carry wounded troops to safety or to comfort those fatally injured.
On Sunday, the Catholic Church in Ireland will hold a special service in Mullingar Cathedral before sending thousands of documents to the Vatican to support the case for his canonisation. World War One had been raging for more than a year when Fr Doyle volunteered to become a military chaplain to the 16th (Irish) Division of the British Army. He served with the division for almost two years, much of that in the trenches at the Western Front, until his death at the Battle of Passchendaele on 16 August 1917.
He was killed by shellfire while going to the aid of two wounded Protestant soldiers, one of which was a young officer from Belfast - 2nd Lt Arthur Vivian Green. Because of that, the Catholic Church in Ireland considers Fr Doyle to be an "ecumenical martyr of charity" who died ministering to soldiers of other Christian denominations. The campaign for sainthood is being led by the Fr Willie Doyle Association, a Dublin-based group comprised mostly of lay people but supported by the clergy.
The group was founded by Patrick Kenny, a business school lecturer who lives a short distance from where Fr Doyle grew up in south County Dublin. "Fr Willie Doyle lived a life of great heroism and, I would also say, great holiness," Kenny told BBC News NI. "He was awarded the Military Cross for his bravery at the Battle of the Somme.
He was mentioned in despatches on a number of occasions as well." Kenny set up the association in 2020 after he became "captivated" by Fr Doyle's courage through reading a biography of the late priest. Born William Joseph Gabriel Doyle in 1873, the future priest had a comfortable, middle-class childhood in the affluent Dublin suburb of Dalkey. He was sent to a Catholic boarding school in England, but returned to Ireland as a teenager, where by the age of 18 he had begun studying to be a Jesuit priest.
He was in his early 40s when he was sent to the Front as a WW1 chaplain. Even though it was a non-combatant role, Kenny points out that the commander of the 16th (Irish) Division, Maj-Gen Sir William Bernard Hickie, described Fr Doyle as "the bravest man that he ever met". He added that Fr Doyle was a prolific letter writer whose personal correspondence has become an important eyewitness source for historians.
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