We have here an astonishing little old Father; little by name and little by stature. He is 85; but is active as a man of 30 – and he never stops preaching retreats. Several times I have tried to get to the Chapel before him at 4:00 AM, but he is always there first. He is a kindly and holy old man, whose faith and simplicity are quite extraordinary. In the middle of an exhortation to the community, you see him turn towards the Tabernacle and say; “this is so, is it not, my good Jesus?”

COMMENT: Fr Willie is referring here to Venerable Adolf Petit, the renowned Belgian spiritual director and retreat master who was his director during his tertian year from 1907-1908 in Tronchiennes, Belgium. Fr Petit died on 20 May 1914.

One of the published biographies of Fr Petit says the following about his relationship with Fr Willie:

So persuasive an example made Father Doyle determined that he too would become a saint and an apostle. This resolution he confided to Père Petit, begging him to help him by his good advice. Overjoyed at the unusual graces bestowed upon the young priest, the Spiritual Father encouraged wholeheartedly his desire for closer union with God, his passionate love of our Lord and his eager zeal for souls. He approved his attraction for mortification, but insisted at the same time that perfection consists much less in the practice of austerities than in the abnegation of one’s will and judgment, in self forgetfulness and humility.

Fr. Doyle was just a man to profit by such instructions. During the retreat which followed his tertianship, he pledged himself to choose and pursued a way of the perfect. In 1912, circumstances brought him again to Belgium; and he made it a duty to call on Père Petit in order to seek his counsel and to voice his gratitude for help already received. This must have been their last meeting. Fr Doyle’s success as a giver of retreats, his wonderful influence as military chaplain in the trenches near the Somme, his own private life of austerity and sacrifice, were due, at least in part, to the training he had received at Tronchiennes.   

The cause for the canonisation of Fr Petit was introduced in 1937 and he was declared Venerable in 1966.