Patrick Joseph Peyton, CSC (January 8, 1909 – June 3, 1992), also known as "the rosary priest", was an Irish-born priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross who founded the Family Rosary Crusade. He popularized the phrases "The family that prays together stays together" and "A world at prayer is a world at peace."
Peyton staged massive rallies worldwide. He utilized mass communication, along with help from some Hollywood celebrities to promote his ministry. Peyton was a popular and charismatic figure in Latin America and the Philippines.
Peyton's cause for canonization was opened in 2001. Pope Francis declared him venerable in 2017.
Patrick Peyton was born on January 9, 1909, in Attymass, County Mayo, in Ireland, to subsistence farmers John and Mary Gillard Peyton. Peyton was the sixth child in a family of five girls and four boys. The Peytons lived in a small cottage on a 14-acre (5.7 ha) stony farm near the foot of the Ox Mountains. They were a devout Catholic family that prayed the rosary every night.
At age five, Peyton was sent in 1914 to his mother's relatives in Bonniconlon, County Mayo, to study at the Bolend School. However, he remained close to his family and deeply religious. In 1917, at age 8, Peyton was living with his grandparents in Attymass and attending school there. While living with them, he spent some time picking potatoes for another farm family. Realizing that this family was not very religious, he convinced them to start praying the rosary. In 1923, then 15 years old, Peyton left this school after an incident with the school principal. He enrolled in another school in Currowerm, but dropped out a few months later to work on the family farm.
By his teens, he was considering a priestly vocation. He applied for a place in a Capuchin Order seminary, but never received a response. The Society of African Missionaries told him that his math grades from school disqualified him. Once John Peyton became too sick to work, his son put away his ambitions for the priesthood to concentrate on supporting the family. His sisters Nellie and Beatrice, who were already in America, sent money home to help the family. In 1927, these sisters convinced Peyton and his older brother Thomas to immigrate to the United States. Peyton decided that he could sell real estate once he was there. John Peyton gave the boys permission to go on the condition that they hold to their Catholic principles. On May 13, 1928, nineteen-year-old Peyton and Thomas set sail for New York City.
The two brothers arrived in New York City after a 10-day trip, traveling by steerage. They took the train from New York to Scranton, Pennsylvania, to live with Beatrice and her family. Nellie had previously spoken to Paul Kelly of Saint Peter's Cathedral in Scranton, mentioning Peyton's interest in the priesthood. Kelly told her to bring him to the cathedral for a conversation as soon as he arrived. Peyton refused and started looking for a job. In June 1928, Kelly searched for and offered him a job as the cathedral sexton.
Peyton took the job as sexton with hesitation, but his daily presence at the cathedral motivated him again to become a priest. Kelly encouraged Peyton's vocation, but insisted that he complete his high school education before admission to the novitiate. With Thomas deciding to enter the priesthood also, the two brothers entered high school while working at the cathedral. In early 1929, the priest Pat Dolan of the Congregation of Holy Cross came to Scranton to recruit new seminarians for his order. Peyton and Thomas left Philadelphia to enter Holy Cross School in Notre Dame, Indiana, the minor seminary of the Holy Cross brothers. The brothers professed their temporary vows to the Holy Cross brothers in 1932.
Higher education and ordination
After completing their high school studies at Holy Cross, Peyton was admitted to the Moreau Seminary of the University of Notre Dame in 1932, where he pursued a Bachelor of Arts. Peyton later credited Cornelius Hagerty, a priest who was the professor of ethics, as being his spiritual advisor.
Peyton entered the School of Theology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. in 1937. However, in October 1938, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Peyton left Catholic University for Notre Dame, where he spent the next year in recovery. Throughout this period, Hagerty encouraged Peyton to seek the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Peyton later said that he felt cured in October 1838. His doctors said that the patches in his lungs had disappeared.
Peyton re-entered Catholic University to complete his theology studies and take his final vows. On June 15, 1941, Peyton and Thomas were ordained priests at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at the University of Notre Dame as members of the Congregation of Holy Cross.
After his ordination in June 1941, the Holy Cross brothers assigned Peyton to Albany, New York, as the chaplain to the Holy Cross brothers who were on the faculty of the Vincentian Institute, a Catholic school in Albany, New York. After the American entry into World War II in December 1941, Peyton started thinking about ways to end violence in the world. Drawing on his family history of saying the rosary, plus what he believed was the intercession of the Virgin Mary when he had tuberculosis, he decided to start a movement for families to pray the rosary together.
Peyton recruited students and faculty at the Vincentian Institute to create a letter-writing campaign to bishops throughout the United States, asked for their help in a campaign to promote rosary prayer by families. In 1942, Peyton knelt at the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes at the Vincentian Institute and promised to establish ten million rosary homes.
A Catholic college in the Albany area donated a time slot on a local radio station to broadcast Peyton's first program on the family rosary. Each week, he would invite a different Catholic family to pray the rosary with him on air. The station management was initially skeptical of the concept, but the show proved to be very popular with its listeners.
Peyton got in contact with Fulton Sheen, a popular priest who had his own weekly radio show with the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). Sheen agreed to offer his audience a free rosary along with an instructional brochure on using it, both provided by Peyton. Sheen told Peyton to expect around 10,000 responses. Instead, the show received over 56,000 requests for the rosary and brochure in two weeks, from Catholics and non-Catholics.
Realizing that he needed the mass media to achieve his goal, Peyton traveled to New York City. He pitched his idea of a radio show to pray for peace to executives of the Mutual Broadcasting System, a national radio network. Mutual said it would run the show if Peyton could persuade a celebrity to appear on it. He then contacted the singer Bing Crosby, who agreed to do it. US President Harry S. Truman, a non-Catholic, endorsed the program.
Peyton's program aired on Mutual in May 1945, In addition to Crosby, the show also featured an appearance by Cardinal Francis Spellman of the Archdiocese of New York. Also praying on the broadcast were members of the Sullivan family of Iowa. Five brothers from that family had been sailors on the USS Juneau; they had died when their ship was sunk during the 1942 Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. The radio program became the most popular program in Mutual's history.