Saint Malachy

(Born 1094, Armagh, County Armagh, Ire.—died Nov. 2/3, 1148, Clairvaux, Fr.; canonized 1190; feast day November 3) celebrated archbishop and papal legate who is considered to be the dominant figure of church reform in 12th-century Ireland.

Malachy was educated at Armagh, where he was ordained priest in 1119. Archbishop Ceallach (Celsus) of Armagh, during his absence to administer the bishopric of Dublin, appointed Malachy vicar in Armagh. There he established his reputation as a reformer by persuading the Irish Catholic church to accept Pope Gregory VII's reform then sweeping the European continent; he is also credited with having introduced the Roman liturgy into Ireland. In about 1123 Malachy was consecrated bishop in County Down, where he restored the celebrated Abbey of Bangor; the following year he was appointed bishop of Connor, County Antrim, but about 1127 violent disputes over his position compelled him to leave, and he subsequently became abbot of Iveragh, County Kerry.

Ceallach, while dying, nominated (1129) Malachy as his successor, both as abbot and as archbishop, thus breaking the time-honoured Irish custom of hereditary succession. Deferring for fear of another vehement opposition, Malachy finally was induced (1132) to accept his new prelacy. For five years he ruled the diocese and the whole province without entering the city of Armagh. He resigned in 1137. To secure the pallium ( i.e., symbol of metropolitan jurisdiction) for his successor at Armagh, he went in 1139 to Rome, where Pope Innocent II made him papal legate in Ireland but refused to grant the pallium . Malachy visited the celebrated abbot Bernard at Clairvaux and later introduced the Cistercians to Ireland by founding (1142) Mellifont in County Louth.

On his way to Rome to make a second application for the pallium , Malachy died at Clairvaux in the arms of Bernard. The establishment of a regular hierarchy in the Irish church—the object of his life—was realized at the Council of Kells, County Meath, in 1152. He was the first Irish Catholic to be canonized. No writings of Malachy are known to exist, but falsely ascribed to him is the Prophecy of the Popes, a 16th-century forgery consisting of a list of mottoes supposedly fitting pontiffs from the mid-12th century to the end of time.

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