Name Joseph MacRory | Term ended 1945 Installed 1928 | |
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Ordination 13 September 1885 (Priest) Consecration 14 November 1915 (Bishop) Education St Patrick's College, Maynooth People also search for Patrick O'Donnell, John D'Alton, Michael Logue, William Conway, Tomas O Fiaich | ||
Joseph MacRory (Irish: Seosamh Mac Ruairí; 19 March 1861 – 13 October 1945) was an Irish Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who served as Archbishop of Armagh from 1928 until his death. He was elevated to the cardinalate in 1929.
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Biography
Joseph MacRory was born in Ballygawley, County Tyrone, as one of the ten children of Francis MacRory, a farmer, and his wife, Rose (née Montague) MacRory. He studied at St. Patrick's College, Armagh and at Maynooth. He was ordained to the priesthood on 13 September 1885 and served as the first president of St. Patrick's Academy, Dungannon from 1886-87.
MacRory taught Scripture and Modern Theology at St Mary's College, Oscott in England until 1889, when he was appointed Professor of Scripture and Oriental Languages at his alma mater of Maynooth College. In 1906, he co-founded the Irish Theological Quarterly.
In 1912 he was made Vice-President of Maynooth. MacRory was appointed Bishop of Down and Connor by Pope Benedict XV on 9 August 1915, and received his episcopal consecration on 14 November from Cardinal Michael Logue. He chose as his episcopal motto Fortis in Fide ("Strong in Faith"). From 1917-18 he was a member of the Irish Convention.
On 22 June 1928, MacRory was promoted to Archbishop of Armagh and thus Primate of All Ireland, in succession to Patrick O'Donnell, and in the consistory of 16 December 1929, Pope Pius XI created him Cardinal Priest of San Giovanni a Porta Latina. MacRory was the papal legate at the 1933 laying of the foundation stone of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, in England, and one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 1939 papal conclave, which selected Pope Pius XII.
MacRory was a strenuous opponent of Protestantism and the Partition of Ireland. In late 1931, MacRory made the following statement:
"The Protestant Church in Ireland – and the same is true of the Protestant Church anywhere – is not only not the rightful representative of the early Irish Church, but it is not even a part of the Church of Christ. That is my proposition."
Wartime
It was MacRory who suggested to Eoin O'Duffy that he raise an Irish Brigade to aid the Generalissimo Franco's Nationalists, who were seeking to overthrow the democratically elected Spanish government during that country's civil war. Many of the Brigade's members were blessed by the Archbishop of Tuam before sailing to Spain from Galway. In 1940, during World War II, he voiced strong objections to proposals for conscription in Northern Ireland, which, in the event, did not come to pass. See Conscription in the United Kingdom.
Miscellanea
MacRory was a supporter of the Gaelic League, and Errigal Ciaran, one of the most famous GAA clubs in Ireland, play at Cardinal MacRory Park, Dunmoyle, which was built in his honour in 1956, the year the Irish Republican Army's Border Campaign began, and a quarter century after the prelate's most notably publicised anti-Protestant comments.
The People's Primate
Biographer J.J. Murphy published, in 1945, a 71-page biography of the prelate, The People's Primate. A Memoir of Joseph Cardinal MacRory, (Dublin, 1945).
Death
After a brief illness, Cardinal MacRory died at the age of 84 from a heart attack at Ara Coeli, the residence in Armagh. He was interred in St Patrick's Cathedral Cemetery, Armagh.