Laois bishop blesses couples at St Valentine's in Dublin

Couples hoping to be lucky in love have been visiting a shrine in Dublin which contains the partial remains of St Valentine.

Engaged couples had their wedding rings blessed at the Carmelite Church in Whitefriar Street on Monday by the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin Denis Nulty at the shrine of St Valentine.

The historic city centre church is a traditional place of pilgrimage at this time of the year.

Among those at the church were engaged couples Gavin and Patrick Corcoran, and Ilona Catharine Dorrepaal and Patrick Michael Lennon.

The remains of St Valentine, put to death in Rome in the third century for refusing to renounce his Christian faith, ended up in Dublin when they were gifted to an Irish preacher, Father John Spratt, by Pope Gregory XVI in 1836.

Bishop Nulty, President of Accord Catholic Marriage Care Service, welcomed the couples to the Shrine.

“Celebrating the sacrament of marriage is a profound decision in the life of a couple.  Today I am honoured to join with Ilona and Patrick, and with Orla and PJ, at the shrine of Saint Valentine. Our two couples represent the many couples across this island who will celebrate the sacrament and thereby connect their love for one another to the source of love, who is God.  A sacrament is like the 3-D glasses we watch movies with; love is not just between the couple themselves, but firmly united with God,” he said.

Following the blessing, the Catholic marriage care service Accord released its latest attendance figures for couples undertaking Sacramental marriage preparation courses. 

Speaking at Saint Valentine’s shrine, Mr Tony Shanahan, director of Accord CLG, said it was reassuring to see that attendance figures for Accord marriage preparation courses are back up to their pre-Covid levels.  

"In 2019 - the most recent full year available for comparison - we provided 285 marriage preparation programmes to 4,610 couples.  This figure equals our service in 2022 when we hosted 4,610 couples on 297 programmes. 

“When we consider that, for 2021, the Central Statistics Office reported that religious ceremonies accounted for 57% of all marriages in the State; and that the 6,721 Catholic marriages that year amounted to 39% of the total figure, then Accord’s data of today paints a positive picture in terms of the numbers who are planning a Church marriage in the future," he said.

The holy relics of Saint Valentine are contained in a reliquary within a dedicated shrine in the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (Carmelite Church on Whitefriar Street), in the Archdiocese of Dublin.  

The church was founded by Father John Spratt (1796-1871) in 1825 on the site of the 13th century Carmelite Monastery.  The church was opened in 1826 and he became its first Prior.  Father Pratt was renowned in Europe for his skill as a preacher.  Following a visit to Rome in 1835, Pope Gregory XVI was so impressed that he gave Father Pratt a reliquary containing relics of Saint Valentine, which he brought back to Whitefriar Street in Dublin. 

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Saint Valentine was a priest who married couples in defiance of the Roman emperor Claudius II’s edict and he was martyred on 14 February around 269 or 270 AD.