In the same place, the commemoration of Blessed Margaret Ball, martyr, who, having become a widow, when she had received into her home several priests who were being hunted, was ordered to be arrested on the information of her own son, and after various kinds of ill-treatment died in prison, a woman of seventy, on a day not recorded.
Lifespan: 1515–1584
Beatified: 27 September 1992 by Pope John Paul II
Memoria liturgica: 20 June
A woman of extraordinary moral integrity who, beyond physical torture, had to endure the betrayal of her own son.
Being the mother of the mayor of Dublin brought her neither prestige nor pride, but rather enormous suffering that determined — or at the very least greatly hastened — her death. The life and martyrdom of the Irish Margaret Ball must be set within the climate of religious persecution that followed the Anglican schism initiated in England by Henry VIII. The extremely close socio-political ties between England and Ireland meant that in 1536 — five years after the famous Act of Supremacy by which the king had caused himself to be proclaimed supreme head of the Church of England, and barely two years after his excommunication and the interdict launched against England by Pope Clement VII — the Parliament of Dublin likewise recognized Henry VIII as the sole head of the Irish Church, thereby effecting a definitive rupture with the Church of Rome.
Margaret was twenty-one years old at that time, having been born in 1515 into the prosperous Bermingham family. At sixteen she married Bartholomew Ball, and the couple had twenty children, of whom only some were fortunate enough to reach adulthood. They were a devoted and deeply religious couple, with a solid economic standing; her husband enjoyed undisputed esteem, which led him also to serve as mayor of Dublin. They were in no way aligned with the prevailing political and religious situation: they regarded and conducted themselves as true Catholics, continuing to acknowledge the primacy of the Pope. A chaplain lived in their great house who regularly celebrated Mass; their home was open to catechetical gatherings and to times of prayer. Margaret, drawing on her husband’s influential standing, went so far as to open a Catholic school on her property.
Bartholomew died in 1568, and Margaret, beyond the grief of losing one so dear to her, found herself also deprived of the protection and support he had provided for her in openly professing and defending the Catholic faith. Despite everything, she continued in her commitment, sheltering priests and religious in her home even as doing so became extremely dangerous. In 1570, with the excommunication of Elizabeth I, who had in the meantime ascended to the throne, a fierce persecution broke out in England, directed in particular against Catholic priests, and soon extended to Ireland as well.
Toward the end of the 1570s Margaret was arrested on the charge of having had Mass celebrated in her home, but was soon released on bail. Meanwhile, her son Walter was nursing the ambition of becoming mayor of Dublin, prepared, in order to obtain the office, to renounce his own faith and acknowledge the religious supremacy of the Queen of England. Margaret fulfilled her duty as a mother to the very end, striving to make her son understand that no political office, however prestigious, could be bartered at the cost of one’s faith. Not only did she fail in this, but her son came to regard her as his bitterest enemy and the greatest obstacle to the satisfaction of his political ambition.
Shortly after his election as mayor, he had his mother arrested on the charge of having sheltered persecuted priests in her home. Margaret was nearly seventy years old and was taken to prison in a cart, passing through the streets of Dublin, exposed to the mockery and scorn of the whole city. Awaiting her was a filthy cell, dripping with damp, without air, which irreparably undermined her health. On account of her precarious condition, she was offered her freedom some two years later, in exchange for a public renunciation of her faith. The refusal of this strong and courageous woman was a foregone conclusion; she chose to end her days in prison, a martyr for the Eucharist and for Papal Primacy.
She died in her cell in 1584, and together with sixteen other companions in the faith — among them four bishops, six priests, one religious brother, and five laypeople — she too, the only housewife in the group, was beatified by John Paul II on 27 September 1992.