Moral integrity, spiritual goodness and truth displayed far greater beauty than people sometimes allowed, the Bishop of Meath and Kildare, Dr Richard Clarke, said yesterday. They all had the force and the awesomeness of real beauty, he added.
"Yet, we have somehow managed to remove clinically even the vestiges of attractive character from our idea of what constitutes a saint - if they are not weaklings, they are seriously scary."
Addressing a Citizenship Service in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, Dr Clarke said the New Testament called everybody to sainthood and to "citizenship of heaven". This was no retreat into pietism.