Can a reformed Irish alcoholic become a Saint...?
Fighting addiction, poverty, and the turmoil of Irish life at the turn of the century, Matt Talbot humbly leads us to the Mother of God.
If it hadn't been for the chains he wore as a symbol of his self-imposed "slavery" to the Virgin Mary, Matt Talbot would have remained as anonymous in death as he had been in life. These chains, found embedded in his flesh when he dropped dead on a Dublin street in 1925, attracted the interest of an astonished twentieth-century world and led to an investigation of his life.
Eddie Doherty, veteran newspaper reporter and author, here presents as complete and up to date a biography as possible, supplying a dramatic backdrop of Ireland s tempestuous history in a bloody era. He imaginatively reconstructs the personalities, the places, the issues, the thoughts, and the feelings that surrounded Matt and marked the era that claimed him, and relates the progress of Matt Talbot's cause for canonization up to the exhumation of his body in 1952.
This timely account ably interprets the full significance of the ex-alcoholic who may someday soon be declared one of Ireland's--and the world's--greatest saints.
Though Matt Talbot's life is an encouraging success story particularly for addicts, his meaning in the modern world extends far beyond being the patron of ex-alcoholics. There is something in his story for everyone--worker, sinner, Christian, skeptic, apostle--a glimmer of greatness, humility, and charity that cannot fail to inspire and amaze.
Fighting addiction, poverty, and the turmoil of Irish life at the turn of the century, Matt Talbot humbly leads us to the Mother of God.
If it hadn't been for the chains he wore as a symbol of his self-imposed "slavery" to the Virgin Mary, Matt Talbot would have remained as anonymous in death as he had been in life. These chains, found embedded in his flesh when he dropped dead on a Dublin street in 1925, attracted the interest of an astonished twentieth-century world and led to an investigation of his life.
Eddie Doherty, veteran newspaper reporter and author, here presents as complete and up to date a biography as possible, supplying a dramatic backdrop of Ireland s tempestuous history in a bloody era. He imaginatively reconstructs the personalities, the places, the issues, the thoughts, and the feelings that surrounded Matt and marked the era that claimed him, and relates the progress of Matt Talbot's cause for canonization up to the exhumation of his body in 1952.
This timely account ably interprets the full significance of the ex-alcoholic who may someday soon be declared one of Ireland's--and the world's--greatest saints.
Though Matt Talbot's life is an encouraging success story particularly for addicts, his meaning in the modern world extends far beyond being the patron of ex-alcoholics. There is something in his story for everyone--worker, sinner, Christian, skeptic, apostle--a glimmer of greatness, humility, and charity that cannot fail to inspire and amaze.
