MATT TALBOT
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Matt Talbot (May 2, 1856- 7 June 1925) was an Irish Ascetic who is revered by many Catholics for his life of self-sacrifice and Mortification of the flesh.
Talbot was born the second eldest of twelve children to a poor family in the North Strand area of Dublin, Ireland. His battle with alcoholism from a young age became famous through the posthumous discoveries on his body. Having drunk excessively for 16 years, Talbot had successfully given it up and maintained sobriety for the following forty years of his life. He was known to his peers as a generous and, perhaps surprisingly given what was to follow, happy man who gave much of his wage to the poor as well as played an active part in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union in the city. He was, also, an extremely devout Catholic and was reportedly on the way to his third mass on the day he died. This in itself would have gone unnoticed were it not for the marks and chains discovered all over his body when he died on a Dublin street in 1925.