DUBLIN (CNS) — A 19th-century Irish laborer and saint-in-the-making could be a new role model for those seeking freedom from addiction, according to a growing apostolate led by a Dublin priest.
Father Brian Lawless described how Venerable Matt Talbot, once a hard-drinking warehouse hand, was transformed into a sober “urban mystic” through his Catholic faith.
More than 60 attendees listened as Fr. Lawless surveyed Talbot’s life as an obscure and impoverished worker in Dublin’s slums, which ranked among the worst in Europe at the time.
Talbot’s visibility grew Aug. 25 when Pope Francis made a special point of stopping at Our Lady of Lourdes Church to pray before some relics of Talbot.
Born in 1856, Talbot was the second-eldest of 10 children who survived out of 12. Largely uneducated, he began working at age 12 for a company that bottled Guinness beer. Talbot took to sampling the product, a common practice among the other child laborers. By age 16, he also started drinking whiskey, and he spent the next 12 years as an alcoholic.
At age 28, Talbot had “a conversion experience,” something shared by many in addiction recovery who “come to a realization that something has to change,” Fr. Lawless said.
Talbot decided to “take the pledge” and commit to a three-month period of abstinence, a common practice encouraged by temperance movements of the day.
Yet Talbot quickly realized that sobriety was not a matter of having an iron will. Suffering from alcohol withdrawal a few days after abstaining, he went into a church and acknowledged in prayer that only God’s grace could sustain him.
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