St. Oliver Plunkett

Who they were

Oliver Plunkett was Archbishop of Armagh in an Ireland where his office was effectively illegal, and for a decade he rebuilt anyway: tens of thousands confirmed on hillsides, clergy reformed, schools founded at Drogheda, and a good deal of it done in disguise under the name Mr. Meleady.

Then Titus Oates's fabricated Popish Plot, the same manufactured hysteria that drove St. Claude de la Colombière out of England, reached Ireland needing a prize. No Irish jury would convict him, so the trial was moved to London, where he was denied the time to bring his witnesses and condemned on testimony the court itself barely pretended to believe. He was executed at Tyburn on 1 July 1681, the last Catholic martyred there, forgiving from the scaffold everyone who had a hand in it. He was canonized in 1975, the first new Irish saint in almost seven centuries, and has become Ireland's patron of peace and reconciliation.

Why people turn to St. Oliver Plunkett

The falsely accused facing a process that is already decided, with St. Mary MacKillop and St. Joseph Calasanz. Irish families. And peacemakers in old quarrels, a patronage he earned by how he died rather than by anything he wrote.

How to ask their intercession

Under a false accusation, his scaffold forgiveness is the summit and not the starting point. Start smaller: one decade for one accuser, by name if you can manage it.