Legion of Mary and the Vincent de Paul Society

At the age of 24 Frank Duff’s life took a new turn when he joined the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul in 1913 .

Normally a high-society man, Frank was now exposed to the real poverty of Dublin of that time. Many who lived in tenement squalor were forced to attend soup kitchens for sustenance and some of the natural consequences of abject poverty, alcoholism and prostitution were rife in Dublin.

Frank fell in with a wonderful group of upstanding Catholic men in the conference he joined and soon rose through the ranks to Conference Secretary and President of St. Patrick’s conference in Myra House, in St. Nicholas of Myra parish in the heart of Dublin.

Frank’s concern for the materially deprived soon developed into a concern for the spiritually malnourished.

The rest is, as they say, history.