Fr John Sullivan SJ, noted for his untiring attention to the sick and the poor, was beatified on May 13, 2017 in Gardiner Street Church in Dublin. The ceremony, attended by almost 2,000 people, consisted of a mass during which a formal request for beatification was made publicly. In an unprecedented ecumenical gesture, the request was made jointly by the Church of Ireland and the Catholic Archbishops, reflecting the fact that Fr John was Anglican for the first half of his life and Roman Catholic for the second. In fact, the entire event was unprecedented, as there has never been a beatification ceremony in Ireland before.
In his homily, Cardinal Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, quoted often from the submissions of ordinary people to the cause of Fr John. “Witnesses in the diocesan processes often repeated that Fr Sullivan was ‘a poor man among the poor’, ‘the personification of the spirit of poverty’ even though he came from a rich family. Faithful to the vow of poverty, he gave immediately to others every gift he received.” He described Fr John’s room at Clongowes: ”he had as his furniture a hard-wood chair, a broken pitcher, a kneeler, some books, a holy water font, his crucifix from which he was inseparable, a little table, and a bed, even with few covers when the weather was colder”.
Cardinal Amato also referred to an incident when Fr John, on one of his customary visits to the sick, encountered a priest already in the cottage visiting. “The pastor asked him to leave, fearing a dangerous opponent in the ministry. Upon his brusque command, Fr Sullivan knelt down and asked forgiveness. The pastor was profoundly moved.”
Fr John Dardis SJ, General Counsellor for Discernment and Apostolic Planning and former Provincial of the Jesuits in Ireland, spoke on behalf of Fr General Arturo Sosa SJ. He referenced Fr John’s Anglican background and paid tribute to the Church of Ireland today.
“The Church of Ireland was the place where John Sullivan’s Christian faith was initially nurtured at home and in Portora Royal School … I pray that this beatification will lead to ever closer collaboration and cooperation between our two Churches.”
Fr Dardis said that Fr John was a man who was held in great affection by Irish Jesuits. “The 1930s in Ireland was a time of great suffering and hardship – a time of great poverty. In this time of difficulty and poverty he stood out as a man preaching the compassion and mercy of God – themes close to the heart of Pope Francis. A central part of our role and mission as Christians is to be witnesses of mercy at a time when, our world, all too often, lacks a sense of forgiveness.”
After his death on February 19, 1933, devotion to Fr John continued to spread and remains lively in many places around Ireland, evident in the large crowd that attended his beatification, including the sick and the elderly.
Also in attendance were members of Fr John’s family, most of whom had travelled from England, and representatives from Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, which Fr John attended in the 1870s, and Trinity College Dublin, where he studied Classics and Law.
Students from Clongowes Wood College, where Fr John had spent most of his priestly life, provided the music during the Liturgy, and trumpeters and timpanists played as a large portrait of Fr John was unveiled just after he was declared “Blessed”. A new relic of his hair, which was kept by the Jesuit, Charlie Barrett, who acted as barber and cut his hair, was brought to the altar, along with the traditional relic card that holds a tiny piece of his very shiny, worn and frayed cassock.
After the ceremony there was time for quiet reflection, during which people queued to receive a blessing from the Fr John’s cross and the new relic, and to venerate his tomb, the gates of which were opened specially for the occasion. A Mass of Thanksgiving was held in Clongowes Wood College on May 20.
Beatification, which confers the title ‘Blessed’, means that a man or woman is considered to be truly holy and worthy of veneration at a local level. The stage after beatification is canonisation, sainthood, which is recognition of this holiness by the universal Church. For this process a further miracle is required, one which is confirmed to have taken place after the beatification. [Jesuits in Ireland]
Click here to watch the full video of the beatification of Fr John Sullivan SJ, now Blessed John Sullivan.