Frank Duff Biography, Part 2 of 6

0:01 it was the beginning of a new entry into a deeper uh spiritual life and a deeper apostolic awareness and commitment so he began to meet a different class of people a different side of society with the saint vincent de paul they used to visit the tenement buildings uh the projects i guess you call them here in dublin and the poverty was desperate back then really people had so little uh probably having shoes on their feet so little to eat barely a roof over their heads very little work desperate poverty large families squalor dirt vermin just horrible horrible conditions all over dublin frank hadn't been exposed to this to any

0:46 level he would have been aware of it but never really exposed to it so his membership of the saint vincent de paul society suddenly awakened him to the reality of the poverty and destitution all around him and this struck him very deeply and he began to to see what he could do and he got very involved in the saint vincent de paul some of the men in the group with him were very apostolic in their own way too and he learned a great deal from them some of them even went on to become priests themselves later on but this organization certainly helped frank on his road to conversion you might say from being say a regular catholic what you might say an average catholic to becoming a normal catholic that is a catholic who's living fully

1:32 their their faith with apostolic zeal so at this time now frank is undergoing this this this conversion you might say so here he is among friends typically in 1917 uh again this is the remember keep in mind the legion was started in 1921 this is before the legion ever began and so he's quite a wide circle of friends there and and very popular among them he's second from the right there again with the moustache in that picture and uh smiling there so uh you know you can see he was obviously a sociable person not shy or retiring in any way but and affable too in his own way very quickly uh very soon after 1913 frank duff uh he decided to go to mass every day for lent and uh

2:18 in his inimitable style then end of len enter end of lent came and he said well uh might as well keep going now really i started so this is a good thing we'll we'll just stay with it and so he continued going to daily mass and never missed daily mass at least one if not two daily masses every day right until until he was in the last day of his life he had attended two masses that very day and such again was his love for the holy eucharist he began to develop an intense life of prayer and in these early years 1913 14 15 and so on used to spend as many as three or four hours a day in prayer obviously the lord was was kind of drawing him into something very deep and and frank being the kind of zealous and willing to apply himself uh follow

3:06 that call so at any rate uh franken is working the same vince nepal came in contact with the the poor the city and he saw that not only were they materially poor but they were spiritually destitute as well and he saw look these people need spiritual help they need prayer in their lives they need some hope in in their desperate poverty they need something to hold on to and so frank began bringing holy medals and prayer cards and trying to supply for the spiritual needs as well as the material needs and the same vince the vince de paul society is solely associated really with with material relief okay there's an element of the spiritual there but strictly it's material relief so

3:52 obviously something was beginning a seed was beginning to grow this spiritually that was there one thing that vince nepal came across they received a letter that look here in dublin there's at this time the 19 uh during the second decade there um in dublin there was a lot of what they call proselytizing going on there was protestant sects moving in and inviting people to come to like a soup kitchen or breakfast on a sunday morning but the deal was in order to get food they'd have to listen to protestant teaching and it was a way of of trying to convert them but it was like uh a really a perverted way of trying to convert people it wasn't there was no freedom there they were playing on the

4:37 needs of the people in order to try to to bring them around and many of them were catholics who used to go there they were just so poor and so hungry and they needed warmth and comfort and food and so that many of them would go there so frank realized this was happening and he went down to this place six and a half white friar street it was called a little place where some of the protestants i guess church of ireland had their meeting hall and he used to try to canvas people on the way in and to say look you shouldn't do this and he'd pray the rosary in between in between clients as it were and he tried to try to win them all win them away from it and it was kind of hopeless but somebody came up to and said well you know there's somebody else who's trying to do the same thing you are and it's this man gavit and he has another soup kitchen this time is catholic soup kitchen that he's running uh why don't you team up

5:24 with him so he went to team up with with gavit and uh they got together he was a tough soldier a tough man and uh they they got on great um and so frank started sending people up to gabit soup kitchen and interestingly the first thing gaba did we open up his soup kitchen he put a little altar with a statue of our lady of grace on it and some flowers and it's that very same statue that was the first legion presidium meeting statue it was almost as if the lord was you know slowly allowing the seed to to take root and and to establish itself frank himself tells various stories or encounters he had on this work one particular sailor who was drunk didn't particularly like frank tell him not to go into the soup kitchen so he

6:09 came out frank with a knife and he wasn't expecting this at all you know this is the last thing he was holding his rosary just to encourage the man but the man must have been a bit too much the worst word for drink kind of staggered a bit and frank was able to sidestep him and he said the punch i gave that man would have done muhammad ali justice you know that he floored him and he felt justified in doing that because his life was obviously at risk and there were other occasions too and frank himself says that he was given supernatural strength he's only a low-sized man you know kind of like alpha lamb when he's a short man but he was given extraordinary strength when he needed it so at any rate the proselytizing was the beginning of of uh this idea of opening up to the spiritual needs of people and

6:55 really that was the seed to beginning the legion of mary what happened around 1917 frank with some of his friends were reading the true devotion to mary and saint louis marie de montfort's true devotion and frank took it up and he read it and now he says this can't understand this makes no sense at all so he took up again he said oh give it another chance no couldn't couldn't no way and took about six times before finally the penny dropped and really it comes back to frank's sense of purpose because just uh going back a few years earlier than 1916 frank had written that little uh pamphlet can we be saints this little one here and i think of you to copy that as well worth reading and

7:41 rereading and rereading and in that pamphlet he he speaks about our lady this is before now he's ever read the true devotion or before the legion of mary and you can see the insight that he has and he says to read and pray and pray again in order to get that love for our lady that we should have and he says that in here that's ever before now the the true devotion comes around so he picks up the true devotion and you know he doesn't let go and it does take a little bit of persuasion from friends but finally the penny drops so he gathers around him some of his friends and they they have these little discussion groups and they talk about the true devotion and they say okay what are we going to do about this now now are we going to need to live this out and consecrate ourselves to our lady where where to from here so they arranged to have a meeting and it was

8:27 about a couple of weeks before the 7th of september 1921 and they sat down and discussed the true devotion to mary and it was in this saint vincent de paul myra house and they just sat around and discussed and they had this habit of finishing at six o'clock with the angelus and that's how that discussion kind of ended but they fixed another date for a meeting said okay now we've got to put this into action and really it was from there that the legion was born and somebody had the idea to set up an altar and it just it just started like frank says it wasn't premeditated it wasn't you know the handbook wasn't written and then they got going it was they just started and they said okay what do we put ourselves at our lady's disposal and now what do we do