Legion of Mary Founded Today in 1921

Last updated on: September 7, 2009 at 7:45 am by Pat McNamara

Legion of Mary Founded Today in 1921 2009-09-07T07:45:00-06:00 Pat McNamara

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Today in 1921 marks the founding of the Legion of Mary in Ireland by layman Frank Duff. The following is taken from the legion website:

Born in Dublin on 7th June 1889, Frank Duff was the eldest of seven children to John Duff and Susan Freehill. His father and his mother were both civil servants in the British Civil Service – remember, this is before 1922 – and both were quite keen intellects. They were a well to do family because Frank’s grand-uncle, who had emigrated during the 1847 famine, and made a fortune in America left it to John Duff’s father. Frank’s grandfather was a school-teacher and used the money to acquire a large library of books which in turn were passed on to John and of course to which Frank had access as he grew up.

At Blackrock college in Dublin, Frank was an excellent student. He was beaten to first place in Ireland in the equivalent of his leaving cert. Irish by half a mark. Frank excelled in languages and modern literature. This explains why he had such a large collection of theology books in his library (still there in his house in Dublin next to the Concilium) in English, Latin and French.
Although a good sportsman, Frank was shy when it came to drama or any form of oratory.
He had the misfortune of being hit behind the ear by a cricket ball during these years which impaired his hearing for the rest of his life – and which was a great cross to him.

Frank’s life was not without its share of tragedy. During his school years, both Frank and his father caught typhoid. Frank recovered but his father was forced to retire through ill-health from the civil service at the age of 42 on only a partial pension. Susan, his mother had already left work to raise her family. Frank thus became the bread-winner of the family as soon as he left school in 1907. He too joined the civil service. Two of his sisters died in childhood. And, while his two other sisters, financed by Frank, studied to become doctors, one of them too became sickly and had to remain at home with the family. Frank soon became a respected man in the civil service. He possessed a keen intellect, a strong sense of discipline and a good sense of humour. He never really liked math at school but set himself to learn all about it after he left school and invented a new set of calculus which he was sent to teach to the treasury department in London because of the increased efficiency it offered.

Frank grew in wisdom and knowledge in his faith too at this time. He loved to read and he devoured book after book on the lives of the saints. He was faithful to Mass and to his rosary and often visited a church while he was young, but it was not until he joined the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul in 1913 at the age of 24 that his faith took a new turn.

Normally a high-society man, Frank was now exposed to the real poverty of Dublin of that time. Many who lived in tenement squalor were forced to attend soup kitchens for sustenance and some of the natural consequences of abject poverty, alcoholism and prostitution were rife in Dublin. Frank fell in with a wonderful group of upstanding Catholic men in the conference he joined and soon rose through the ranks to Conference Secretary and President of St. Patrick’s conference in Myra House, in St. Nicholas of Myra parish in the heart of Dublin.
Frank’s concern for the materially deprived soon developed into a concern for the spiritually malnourished. It was his idea to begin picketing the Protestant soup kitchens and to set up a rival Catholic soup kitchen instead. He joined forces with Sergeant Major Joe Gabbett who was already at this work of discouraging those entering the Protestant soup kitchens, and over the years succeeded in closing down two of them.

In 1916, aged 27, he published his first pamphlet “Can we be Saints ?“. In it he expressed one of the strongest convictions of his life, namely, that all without exception are called to be saints and that through our Catholic faith we have available all the means necessary to attain this.
In 1917 he came to know the Treatise of St. Louis Marie de Montfort on the True Devotion to Mary, a work which changed his life completely.

On September 7th, 1921 Frank Duff founded the Legion of Mary. This is a lay apostolic organization at the service of the Church, under ecclesiastical guidance. Its twofold purpose is the spiritual development of its members and advancing the reign of Christ through Our Lady.
The Legion, which is to be found in almost every country in the world, has nearly 3 million active members and many more auxiliary (praying) members.

In 1965 Pope Paul VI invited Frank Duff to attend the Second Vatican Council as a Lay Observer, an honour by which the Pope recognized and affirmed his enormous work for the lay apostolate. On November 7th 1980 Frank Duff died and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. In July 1996 the Cause of his canonisation was introduced by the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Desmond Connell.

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