PP turns editor to launch portraits of modern saints

PP turns editor to launch portraits of modern saints

17 June 2015

A DOWNPATRICK priest has collated almost 50 portraits of modern day saints.

Fr John Murray’s Saints of our Time was launched on Thursday at St Patrick’s Parochial House  by the Bishop of Derry, Most Reverend Donal McKeown DD.

In this collection, which featured in The Sacred Heart Messenger magazine, are well known figures such as Bishop Oscar Romero, Simone Weil, Edith Stein and Billy Graham, as well as lesser known heroes and heroines such as Rose Hawthorne, Georges Rouault, Laura Vicuna and Aloysis Stepinac.

Fr Murray said: “In writing these stories I wanted to help people see that sanctity and holiness did not just belong to the ancient past, but was something attainable in the modern age. 

“These men and women of this past twentieth century lived ordinary lives – not more than a few decades removed from our own. 

“Some of them had colourful pasts, when perhaps they – by their own admission – did not always walk with Christ. But God’s grace at some point touched their lives and brought them to serve him in a most extraordinary way.”