Servant of God Columba O’Neill (1848–1923)

Nov. 1, 2024

By Columbia staff

Nov. 1, 2024

Servant of God Columba O’Neill

At age 14, John O’Neill set off from home as a traveling shoemaker in search of God’s will. After more than 12 years of working with soles, O’Neill discovered his calling as a Holy Cross brother, and he spent the rest of his life ministering to souls.

O’Neill was born into an Irish coal-mining family in Pennsylvania on Nov. 5, 1848. He had severely deformed feet and was not expected to live long, but with the help of his mother and four older siblings, he learned to walk with a shuffling gait. He left home at the outset of the Civil War, and feeling called to religious life, he worked as an itinerant cobbler while attending daily Mass and spending hours in prayer. Rejected by a Franciscan community in California, O’Neill heard about the Congregation of Holy Cross and made his way to Indiana, where he was accepted as a postulant at the University of Notre Dame. He took the religious name Columba and made final vows two years later, in 1876.

Brother Columba ministered nine years at an orphanage before opening a shoe shop at Notre Dame that doubled as an office of spiritual direction. He had a special devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and distributed countless Sacred Heart badges and prayer cards to visitors. People

soon began reporting miracles they said resulted from asking Brother Columba for prayers. Letters with intentions poured in — more than 10,000 over the years — and in response, Brother Columba prayed as many as 60 novenas at a time, always crediting any divine intervention to the Sacred Heart and to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Brother Columba O’Neill died from influenza at age 75 on Nov. 20, 1923. His cause for canonization was opened in 2022.

Servant of God Columba O’Neill (1848–1923)

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