Pope canonises Blessed Charles

CELEBRATIONS welcoming Ireland’s newest Catholic saint continue in Rome today with a special mass for pilgrims who attended the canonisation.

Passionist priest Blessed Charles of Mount Argus, who died in Dublin in 1893, was formally declared Saint Charles by Pope Benedict XVI yesterday in recognition of his dedication to the sick, the dying and the bereft.

President Mary McAleese joined around 600 Irish pilgrims led by Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin at the two-hour long service in St Peter’s Square.

Afterwards, President McAleese met Pope Benedict before paying a visit to St Isidore’s College, which was built by Irish Franciscans in Rome.

The President also addressed the staff and students of the Pontifical Irish College in the city, and attended a special Mass to mark the inauguration of the chapel at Villa Spada, the Irish Embassy to the Holy See.

This evening in Rome, Archbishop Martin will say Mass in the saint’s honour for the pilgrims and Irish community in Rome in the ancient Basilica of Saints John and Paul in the city.

In his homily to be delivered at the Mass, Archbishop Martin speaks of a Catholic Church in need of renewal and urges people not to give up on their faith or the ability to spread its message in society.

St Charles was born John Andrew Houben in the Netherlands in 1821, and arrived in Ireland as an ordained priest in 1857 to help grow the then newly established monastery of Mount Argus on Dublin’s south side.

He gained a city and countrywide reputation as a cleric gifted at communicating with individuals and empathising with those in physical or emotional pain.

He was also credited with having a healing effect on the sick, and his beatification by Pope John Paul II in 1988 followed investigations into claims that he performed two miracle cures of apparently incurable patients.