Whitefriar Street Church
Nineteenth-century Carmelite church holding the sealed reliquary said to contain the bones of Saint Valentine.
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About this audio guide
This guide to Whitefriar Street Church in Dublin follows a metal casket carried through the streets in November 1836, after a Carmelite friar named John Spratt preached so movingly in Rome that Pope Gregory the Sixteenth gave him relics said to be Saint Valentine's. You'll hear how Archbishop Murray installed the sealed casket here during a High Mass, and how it was later tucked beneath the altar during renovations and simply forgotten for decades. Along the way, a Dublin sculptor named Irene Broe carved the statue that now watches over the shrine, unveiled in 1956. Listen for how the church still fills every February the fourteenth.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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