Today is the 29th death anniversary of Servant of God Frank Duff, the founder of the Legion of Mary. Let us pray that his heroic example would be recognized as a model for all Catholics and that he be raised to the altars of the Church.
God our Father, You inspired your servant Frank Duff with a profound insight into the mystery of your Church, the Body of Christ, and of the place of Mary the Mother of Jesus in this mystery. In his immense desire to share this insight with others and in filial dependence on Mary he formed her Legion to be a sign of her maternal love for the world and a means of enlisting all her children in the Church's evangelizing work.
We thank you, Father, for the graces conferred on him and for the benefits accruing to the Church from his courageous and shining faith. With confidence we beg you that through his intercession you grant the petition we lay before you .....
We ask too that if it be in accordance with your will, the holiness of his life may be acknowledged by the Church for the glory of Your Name, through Christ Our Lord. Amen.
Why do we want Frank Duff beatified?
What is the reason for spending so much time and energy on the Cause when there are so many other forms of apostolic work that might seem more urgent and necessary? One reason is that the prayer and work involved in the process of beatification is itself a tremendous form of evangelization. We are not simply eulogizing Frank Duff but we wish to spread the message that he taught and lived.
What he stood for is what is important.
One pivotal purpose in the beatification of a man or woman is to make their message heard loudly throughout the Church. We might get some idea why it is good to promote the beatification of men and women from the words of Frank Duff himself.
He writes:
“We must read the lives of the saints. God’s purpose in bringing about the canonization of saints was to provide a headline which would draw us on to goodness and heroism. Saints are the doctrines and practices of holiness made visible. If we frequent their company, we will soon imitate their qualities.”
Evangelization is surely making the teaching of the Gospel and the Christian way of life visible and accessible to as many people as possible.
What are the main elements in his message and spirituality?
Let me stress just one or two points in his message. The first published work of Frank Duff was the pamphlet entitled “Can We Be Saints?” His answer was a resounding Yes.
Everyone, without exception, is made and called to be a saint and the means are readily accessible to all in the everyday living of the Catholic life.
That is their very first job – to try to be a saint. If we are not really trying to be saints then to that extent we are wasting the gift of our lives. It is no good, he used to say, to ask men and women to be good, you have to ask them to be heroic. He founded the Legion of Mary as a school of sanctity.
For nearly all his life, Frank lived in close, daily contact with the men and women who lived in the hostels he founded. He cared for their material needs and tried to ease the profound pain at the heart of their lives. But above all he wanted each one of them to go to Heaven and so he provided them with access to all the means that the Church offers them. Frank looked up to each individual because he saw Christ in them.
I knew Mother Teresa reasonably well during my ten years in India and met her often at various places on my travels. Frank Duff had the same regard and love of the poor that she possessed and above all wanted them to live and die in the state of sanctifying grace.
He wanted everyone, to be authentically holy. In short, he believed with all his mind and heart in what the Second Vatican Council referred to as the universal call to holiness.
For Frank the universal call to holiness necessarily includes the universal call to evangelization or mission. There is endless joy in being an instrument, with God’s grace, in bringing even one soul to Heaven. Frank sought to bring all souls to Heaven or at least as many as possible. I think it could be argued that his desire for the salvation of souls was the deepest thrust in his spirituality.
The salvation of souls dominates the life of every saint. Frank found it difficult to imagine how you could save your own soul without seeking to save the souls of others.
The desire to save souls defines also the reason why he founded the Legion of Mary. He adapted the prayer attributed to St. Francis Xavier for the Conversion of the Whole World as follows:
“O Lord all hearts are in Your hands. You can bend as it pleases You the most obdurate and soften the most hardened. Do that honor this day to the blood, merits, wounds, names and inflamed hearts of Your beloved Son and His most Holy Mother by granting the conversion of the whole world. Nothing less, my God, nothing less, because of Mary, their Mother; because of your might and Your mercy.”
Frank Duff was great in the small things, and heroic in doing the commonplace, and his purpose in al things great and small was his immense desire to love God and to be an instrument with and through Mary and the Holy Spirit in the conversion of sinners and the salvation of souls.
Fr. Bede McGregor O.P.
His message is radically rooted in the Gospel and the Tradition of the Church. This is why it is so important.

The official petition to introduce the cause for the beatification of Mr. Duff was accepted and signed by his grace Archbishop Desmond Connell in July 1996.
Frank Duff is now known under the title Servant of God. One of the major stages in the process for a person to be declared a saint is the verification of heroic sanctity by means of a detailed investigation through the appropriate office in Rome formalized by the issue of a solemn decree. The person may then be said to be a Venerable – which means to be regarded with awe. E.g. Edel Quinn The next step requires an authentic and irrefutable miracle (or two) in order to declare the venerable as blessed. Finally, canonization itself is a declaration by the Pope that a deceased person is raised to the full honours of the altar, that is, a saint. Two miracles credited to the beatus are usually required before canonization to attest the heroic virtue of the saint. Where, beatification allows veneration of the blessed, canonization requires it. The canonization is usually celebrated at St. Peter’s.
So, when it comes to the life and work of Frank Duff we are at the stage of determining the truth of his life and virtue to prove that he is worthy of the title of Venerable. This is the first step in the process, which will judge if Mr Duff’s life was one of heroic sanctity. Favorable and unfavorable witnesses have to be interviewed and questioned under oath and his writings will have to be examined by theologians to check their fidelity to the faith and the moral teaching of the Church. This process will be a lengthy one since many persons who knew Frank have to be interviewed and his prolific writings have to be carefully examined.
Frank lived a long life – born on 7th June 1889 and died on 7th November 1980 – 91 years – that’s more years than most! He did not found the Legion of Mary until he was 32 years of age. In the following 59 years he wrote an estimated 200,000 letters – and not just small letters at that - (that works out at about 10 letters a day for his whole life). He has written 205 different articles compiled into several books, there are about 9 hours of video of a taped interview with him that is available (all of which are transcribed) and the Concilium wrote to me recently to tell me that they have around 140 audio tapes of interviews, about which 50% or so of which have been transcribed at this stage.
In other words, that amounts to a considerable amount of primary written material to be read and analyzed.