saint valentine in dublin

In the church of the Carmelite Fathers in Whitefriar Street lies the body of St Valentine, whose feast day on 14th February is now celebrated with cards, chocolates, tokens of love and sentiments not usually associated with the more chaste saints.

The body, which formerly lay in the cemetery of St Hippolytus in Rome, was presented to the Fathers in 1836 by Pope Gregory XVI.

The church itself, designed by George Papworth in 1825, stands on the site of the thirteenth-century church occupied by the same Order before the Reformation.
The building also holds an interesting fifteenth-century oak carving of the Madonna and Child which is believed to have come from St Mary's Abbey.