The man believed to have been primarily responsible for bringing relics of St Therese of Lisieux to Ireland has been named Kildare Person of the Year 2001.
Carmelite priest Father Joe Ryan (73), who took the name Linus after an early Pope, has led the national pilgrimage to Lisieux for the past 30 years and was co-ordinator of the recent visit which took in all Ireland's 26 Catholic dioceses. An estimated 75 per cent of the population visited the relics.
As prior of White Abbey in Kildare, Father Ryan hosted an international congress in 1997 to mark the centenary of St Therese's death.
Ordained in 1953, he was provincial of the Carmelite order in Ireland from 1969 to 1976. In 1973 he was president of the Conference of Major Religious Superiors (now known as the Conference of Religious of Ireland). In 1945 and 1946 he was a county minor footballer for Kildare.