Blessed Margaret Ball

Blessed Margaret Ball was a widow of Dublin and the mother of a family who, at a time when Catholics in Ireland were persecuted, welcomed hunted priests into her home. Betrayed by her own son, she died in prison. She is one of the seventeen Irish martyrs declared blessed in 1992. Her memorial falls on June 20.

She was born about 1515 into the wealthy Bermingham family; the exact date of her birth is not known. At sixteen she married Bartholomew Ball, who later served as mayor of Dublin. She bore many children, but only some of them lived to adulthood. The couple remained faithful to the Catholic Church and acknowledged the authority of the pope. A chaplain lived in their house and celebrated Mass, catechesis and common prayer took place there, and Margaret also opened a Catholic school on her property.

In 1536 the parliament in Dublin recognized King Henry VIII as the sole head of the Church in Ireland. Margaret’s husband died in 1568. As a widow she lost his protection, yet she went on receiving priests and religious in her home, even when, after the excommunication of Queen Elizabeth I in 1570, the persecution of Catholics, and of priests above all, reached Ireland. Toward the end of the 1570s she was arrested on the charge that Mass was being celebrated in her house, but she was soon released on bail.

Her son Walter sought the office of mayor of Dublin, and to obtain it he renounced the Catholic faith and acknowledged the queen’s supremacy over the Church. His mother tried to convince him that no office may be bought at the price of one’s faith. Soon after taking office, Walter had her arrested, accusing her of sheltering hunted priests. Already elderly and in poor health, she was carried on a cart through the streets of Dublin to prison and shut in a damp, airless cell.

About two years later she was offered her freedom in exchange for a public renunciation of her faith. She refused. She died in prison in 1584, after three years in confinement. According to the Roman Martyrology she was then seventy years old. The day of her death is not known. The Martyrology also records that before her death she endured torments of various kinds.

The cause of the Irish martyrs of the time of persecution was opened in 1904, and on July 6, 1991, the decree on their martyrdom was promulgated. John Paul II beatified Margaret Ball on September 27, 1992, in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, together with Dermot O’Hurley, archbishop of Cashel, the layman Francis Taylor, and fourteen other martyrs. In his homily he called her a woman of extraordinary integrity who, besides physical suffering, endured the pain of betrayal by her own son. The apostolic letter set the memorial of all seventeen martyrs on June 20.