“Thirst for the conversion of souls.”
Declan Lawlor, President of the Concilium, to the conferenceEmbrace the Grace is the Legion’s conference for young adults, and this year it was held in Dublin on the last Saturday of August. Legionaries from Down and Connor made the journey south for it and took their place among the 125 who filled the hall — 55 of them legionaries, and 70 who are not in the Legion at all. That second number is the one worth sitting with.
The morning belonged to two talks. Catherine McMahon spoke on The Everyday Apostle — Bringing Christ into Daily Life with Our Lady, which is the Legion’s whole method in a sentence. Fr Brian Doyle OP took the harder question head on: Is the Blessed Virgin Mary Mediatrix of All Graces?
The workshops were given by young Catholic adults to young Catholic adults — Christine O’Hara on encountering the Lord through the Most Holy Rosary, Mary-Aoife Ong on St Carlo Acutis, Sean Blackwell on being a Catholic creative in a secular world, and Neil Mather on how to evangelise your friends. Two young legionaries, Gemma Haire and Mario Nunis, gave their testimonies. And by video from Reykjavik, Fr Patrick Breen and Fr Denis O’Leary described a Church in Iceland that has been quietly growing — not a thing anyone in the room had expected to hear.
At lunch there were tours of Frank Duff House and the chapel of the Regina Coeli hostel, which a good many found the most affecting part of the day: the rooms where the Legion began are still, plainly, rooms where the work goes on. Declan Lawlor, President of the Concilium, told the conference to thirst for the conversion of souls.
The afternoon moved to St Mary of the Angels on Church Street for adoration, confession and Mass. That it is a Franciscan church mattered this year — 2026 is the eight hundredth anniversary of the death of St Francis, and a plenary indulgence was available to those who fulfilled the usual conditions. Mass was celebrated by Fr Anthony Kavanagh, Fr Declan Lohan and Fr Antony Kurian, and the music was worth the journey on its own.
Afterwards everyone walked round to The Black Sheep on Capel Street, and the day ended as these days ought to — with food, and with people who had arrived as strangers still talking. Our thanks to every legionary who put it together. We pray that those who came were blessed by it, and that the seventy who are not yet in the Legion find their way to a praesidium.
