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Tag Archives: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin


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Birth of Barry Andrews, Fianna Fáil Politician

Barry Andrews, Fianna Fáil politician who serves as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Dublin constituency, is born in Dublin on May 16, 1967. He previously serves as Minister of State for Children from 2008 to 2011. He is a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dún Laoghaire constituency from 2002 to 2011.

Andrews comes from a family with strong political connections. His grandfather, Todd Andrews, fought in the Irish War of Independence and became a founder-member of Fianna Fáil, and his grandmother, Mary Coyle, was a member of Cumann na mBan. His father, David Andrews, served as a TD from 1965 to 2002 and is a former Minister for Foreign Affairs, while his uncle, Niall Andrews, is a former Fianna Fáil TD and MEP and his cousin, Chris Andrews (son of Niall Andrews), has been a Sinn Féin TD since 2020 (having previously served as a Fianna Fáil TD from 2007 to 2011). In April 2018, Andrews is described as “part of Fianna Fáil royalty.”

Andrews is educated at Blackrock College and attends university at University College Dublin (UCD). Before entering political life, he works as a secondary school teacher in Dublin from 1991 until 1997, working in Senior College Ballyfermot, Sutton Park School and Bruce College. While a secondary school teacher, he studies law at King’s Inns and qualifies as a barrister in 1997. He is called to the Bar in 1997 and practices as a barrister until 2003.

Andrews is first elected to public office in the 1999 Irish local elections as a Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Councillor. He is elected to Dáil Éireann at the 2002 Irish general election.

In June 2006, Andrews leads a group of Fianna Fáil backbenchers in an unsuccessful attempt to establish a backbench committee to influence government policy. At the 2007 Irish general election, he retains his seat in Dún Laoghaire with 8,587 votes.

Andrews is appointed Minister of State for Children in May 2008. As Minister, he frames the Government response to the Ryan Report on Institutional Abuse. This includes an Implementation Plan that delivers an additional 200 social workers for the HSE Child and Family Services. In April 2009, he introduces the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Scheme, which provides, for the first time, free universal access to pre-school education. The scheme benefits 65,000 children in 2013.

After the release of the Murphy Report into child abuse in the Dublin diocese in November 2009, Andrews, speaking at a conference in Dublin Castle, is asked about the position of the Bishop of Limerick, Donal Murray. He says, “I think it’s everybody’s view that if adverse findings are made against an individual in a commission of inquiry, then it would be amazing that there be no consequences for them.” Bishop Murray subsequently apologises to survivors and resigns from office.

In December 2009, Andrews oversees the introduction of government policy to lower the legal age of consent to sixteen, citing a Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution report which recommends the legal age be reduced to sixteen from the current seventeen. He expresses the view the existing laws are “inappropriate” and out of touch with the modern reality of sexual relations between young people and promises to publish legislation to change the age of consent to sixteen. He notes that Ireland and Malta are “the only countries in Europe with an age of consent of seventeen.” However, the law is not passed by the Oireachtas before the 2011 Irish general election in which Fianna Fáil cedes power to a Fine Gael-Labour coalition.

On January 31, 2011, in the run up to the general election, Andrews is named Health spokesman by the party leader, Micheál Martin. He loses his seat at the general election.

In September 2012, Andrew is appointed Fianna Fáil Director of Elections for the Children’s referendum.

In February 2019, Andrews is selected as the Fianna Fáil candidate for the Dublin constituency at the 2019 European Parliament election. He is elected in May 2019 receiving 14.1% of the 1st preference votes, but as the fourth candidate elected, he does not take his seat until after the UK leaves the European Union on January 31, 2020.

In June 2023, Andrews is the recipient of the Defence, Security and Space Award at The Parliament Magazine‘s annual MEP Awards.

Andrews is a member of the European Parliament Committee on Development, the European Parliament Committee on International Trade, the European Parliament Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, the Delegation to the EU-UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, the Delegation to the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee and the European Parliament Delegation for Relations with South Africa. His contributions to the International Trade committee include his work on the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) where he is a rapporteur.

Andrews is a founder member of the European Parliament’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Alliance. He also founds the Brussels-Belfast Forum with members of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Andrews is appointed EU Chief Observer for the 2023 Nigerian Federal and State elections by High Representative Vice President Josep Borrell. A report on the election is subsequently produced highlighting that the election was marred by a lack of transparency, public mistrust in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), violence, and vote buying, stressing the need for comprehensive electoral reforms.

Outside of his political career, Andrews is appointed chief executive of the Irish aid charity GOAL in November 2012, replacing the retiring founder, John O’Shea. In October 2016, he resigns from GOAL after it is revealed that other senior executives of GOAL have been involved in “large-scale fraud,” though there is no suggestion that he himself is involved in the scandal. In October 2017, the new CEO of GOAL announces a deficit of €31.6 million due to the fraud but says that it will survive after “one of the most challenging years” in its 40-year history.

In March 2017, Andrews is appointed as Director-General of the Irish State-supported EU think tank and advocacy body, the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), with the Chairperson of the IIEA, former Leader of the Labour Party, Ruairi Quinn, describing him as having the “political and administrative skills” of value to the IIEA.

Andrews is married and has two sons and a daughter. His brother, David McSavage, is a comedian, and he is a first cousin of former RTÉ television and radio presenter Ryan Tubridy.


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Birth of Donal Murray, Former Roman Catholic Bishop of Limerick

Donal Brendan Murray, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Limerick from 1996 to 2009, is born in Dublin on May 29, 1940. He previously serves as an Auxiliary Bishop of the Dublin diocese.

Murray is educated at Blackrock College, a voluntary day and boarding Catholic secondary school for boys aged 13–18, in Williamstown, Blackrock, County Dublin. He studies for a BA and master’s degrees in philosophy at University College Dublin (UCD), obtains a B.Div at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, and his License and Doctorate in theology at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum). He is ordained on May 22, 1966.

Murray lectures in the Mater Dei Institute of Education from 1969, becoming professor of moral theology at Holy Cross College, located in Clonliffe Road, Drumcondra, Dublin. He also lectures at University College Dublin from 1973 to 1982 in Catechetics and from 1978 to 1982 in Medical Ethics.

In 1981, Murray is appointed Titular Bishop of Glenndálocha and Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, making him the youngest bishop at the time, aged only 41. He is appointed as Bishop of Limerick on February 10, 1996, by Pope John Paul II. He is installed as Bishop of Limerick on March 24, 1996.

In November 2009, Murray is pressured to resign from his post after the Murphy Report finds that he had mishandled child sexual abuse allegations within his diocese.

Murray announces his resignation to a congregation, including priests of the Diocese, people working in the Diocesan Office and the Diocesan Pastoral Centre, at 11:00 a.m. (noon in Rome, the hour of the publication of the decision) in St. John’s Cathedral, Limerick.


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Birth of John Charles McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin

John Charles McQuaid, C.S.Sp., the Catholic Primate of Ireland and Archbishop of Dublin between December 1940 and January 1972, is born on July 28, 1895, in Cootehill, County Cavan. He is known for the unusual amount of influence he has over successive governments.

McQuaid is the eldest son of Eugene McQuaid and Jennie Corry McQuaid. He comes from a medical family, with his father, paternal uncle, sister and half-brother all being doctors. He is educated at St. Patrick’s College, Cavan, followed by Blackrock College in Blackrock, Dublin, which is run by the Holy Ghost Fathers, and the Jesuit Clongowes Wood College. He enters the Holy Ghost novitiate at Kimmage, Dublin, in 1913 and is professed in 1914. He graduates from the University College Dublin (UCD) in 1917 with first-class honors in classics. He continues his postgraduate studies at UCD with a master’s degree and a teaching diploma and subsequently earns a doctorate in theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

Ordained in 1924, the theology in which McQuaid is trained is conservative — strongly neo-scholastic and hostile to modernism and liberalism. His hatred of the French Revolution is expressed in several pastorals and speeches throughout his career. He also regards Protestantism as a fundamental error from which Irish Catholics should be quarantined as much as possible.

Appointed Dean of Studies at Blackrock College, McQuaid becomes a prominent figure in Catholic education and chairs the Catholic Headmasters’ Association for several years. In 1931 he is appointed president of Blackrock College, in which capacity he becomes acquainted with Éamon de Valera, the future Irish Taoiseach whose sons attend the school. In 1936 while drafting a new Irish constitution, de Valera consults McQuaid, although he rejects McQuaid’s draft “One, True Church” clause which states, among other things, that the Catholic Church is the one true church in Ireland.

When McQuaid is appointed Archbishop of Dublin in 1940, the appointment of a priest from the regular clergy causes considerable surprise. Irish government archives reveal that de Valera, as is suspected at the time, presses McQuaid’s claims at the Vatican. However, it is doubtful whether the Vatican needs much persuasion. There is a dearth of potential episcopal talent and McQuaid has an outstanding reputation as a Catholic educationalist.

Once appointed, McQuaid proves to be one of the ablest administrators in the history of the Irish Church. In the first two years of his episcopate, he sets up the Catholic Social Service Conference to alleviate the poverty and distress in Dublin which is aggravated by the war, and the Catholic Social Welfare Bureau to help the thousands of Irish emigrants going to Britain for war work. These two organizations fill a much-needed gap and continue to exist after the war. The expansion of Dublin city and its suburbs during his episcopate requires the building of new churches, schools, and hospitals. Meeting these demands also necessitates a considerable increase in the number of clergies, secular and regular, whose numbers more than double in the period from 1941 to 1972.

Given his previous career, the importance McQuaid assigns to education is not surprising. He is critical of the low priority accorded to education by successive governments and is particularly critical of the poor and pay conditions of teachers. His intervention in the primary teachers’ strike in 1946 is poorly received by the government and marks the souring of his relationship with de Valera. During his episcopate the number of primary schools increases by a third while the number of secondary schools more than double but, as with social welfare, the government increasingly assumes a dominant role in education from the 1960s onwards. Almost immediately after his appointment in 1940, he takes a hardline stand against the attendance of Catholic students at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). The ban lasts until 1970, when the increase in student numbers renders it untenable and he accedes reluctantly.

McQuaid has a formidable list of achievements in health care, especially maternity and pediatric services, physical and mental handicap services, and the treatment of alcoholism. It is ironic, therefore, that the most controversial episode of his career occurs in this area — the Irish hierarchy’s rejection in 1951 of a free mother-and-child health service. This leads to the resignation of the Minister for Health, Dr. Noël Browne, and is a watershed in Church-State relations in Ireland. With Irish tuberculosis and infant mortality statistics ranking among the highest in the world, the hierarchy, and particularly McQuaid, lose considerable support by lining up with the conservative medical establishment to resist efforts at socialized medicine.

From various pastorals that McQuaid issues at the time, it is clear that he does not see the need for the Second Vatican Council. As its deliberations proceed, his unease grows, and he becomes increasingly preoccupied with the issue of episcopal power and independence that he believes are being threatened by the Council. In the areas of liturgical reform, greater lay participation, and ecumenism, he is slow in implementing the Vatican II reforms. His views on ecumenism had always been lukewarm and had led to allegations that he was anti-Protestant. His personality and policies are criticized by a more assertive Dublin laity, but being a shy, reserved man who increasingly feels the isolation of office, he never responds to such comments. In 1968 the reaction to Humanae vitae causes open rebellion in the Dublin diocese, the force of which catches him unaware. His last pastoral as archbishop in 1971 betrays his anger and bemusement at the response to Humanae vitae in Dublin.

At the age of 75, McQuaid submits his resignation to the Vatican, and it is accepted. His resignation is announced in January 1972, when he is replaced by Dermot Ryan. McQuaid dies in Loughlinstown, County Dublin, the following year on April 7, 1973. He is buried in St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in Dublin, the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.

McQuaid’s substantial archives are released by the Dublin Diocesan Archives in the late 1990s. In 1999 journalist John Cooney publishes a hostile biography of McQuaid, which makes controversial allegations of sexual abuse against McQuaid. The allegations are based on tenuous evidence gathered by McQuaid’s nemesis from the 1951 Mother and Child controversy, Dr. Noël Browne, who had died in 1997. No corroborating evidence is produced or has since emerged.


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Death of James Warren Doyle, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin

James Warren Doyle, Roman Catholic Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, who uses the signature “JKL”, an acronym from “James Kildare and Leighlin,” dies on June 15, 1834. He is active in the Anti-Tithe movement and a campaigner for Catholic emancipation until it is attained in 1829. He is also an educator, church organiser and the builder of the Cathedral of the Assumption in Carlow.

Doyle is born close to New Ross, County Wexford in 1786, the posthumous son of a respectable Catholic farmer. His mother, Anne Warren, of Quaker extraction, is living in poverty at the time of his birth. At the age of eleven he witnesses the horrors of the Battle of New Ross between the United Irishmen and British Crown forces supplemented by the militia and yeomanry.

Doyle receives his early education at Clonleigh, at Rathconrogue at the school of a Mr. Grace, and later at the Augustinian College, New Ross under the care of an Augustinian monk, Rev. John Crane.

Doyle joins the Augustinian friars in 1805 at Grantstown, County Wexford, and then studies for his doctorate at Coimbra in Portugal (1806–08). His studies are disturbed by the Peninsular War, during which he serves as a sentry in Coimbra. Later, he accompanies the British Army with Arthur Wellesley‘s forces to Lisbon as an interpreter.

Following Doyle’s return to Ireland, he is ordained to the priesthood on October 1, 1809, at Enniscorthy. He teaches logic at the Augustinian College, New Ross. In 1813, he is appointed to a professorship at St. Patrick’s, Carlow College, holding the Chair of Rhetoric and in 1814, the Professorship of Theology.

Michael Corcoran, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, dies on February 22, 1819. Doyle is a popular choice of the clergy and bishops of the Archdiocese of Dublin and is chosen by the Holy See as Corcoran’s successor. He is formally named in August 1819 and is duly consecrated in Carlow Parish Church on November 14. During his fifteen-year tenure as Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, he earns respect nationwide for his polemics in furtherance of the Catholic position in both Irish and British society, and in supporting the work of the Catholic Association. His books on pastoral, political, educational and inter-denominational matters provide a rich source of material for social and religious historians. He is a close ally of Daniel O’Connell in the political campaign for Catholic emancipation which is finally passed in 1829 by the Wellington government.

In 1830, the new tithe-proctor of Graigue, a parish of 4,779 Catholics and 63 Protestants, decides to break with the tradition of Doyle’s predecessor and to enforce seizure orders for the collection of arrears of Tithes. Tithes provide financial support of the established Anglican Church of Ireland. Some of the recalcitrant Catholics habitually transfer ownership of their livestock to Doyle in order to avoid seizure at the town fair. The new proctor requests their priest’s cooperation in handing over the assets. Doyle refuses, and the proctor, aided by the Royal Irish Constabulary, seize some of the livestock. A mass riot breaks out at the fair and there is several casualties. A civil disobedience campaign follows, peppered with sporadic violence mostly at county fairs over the seizure of livestock. A period of instability that becomes known as the Tithe War follows.

Doyle is a leader of nonviolent resistance to the Tithe, devoting himself both to strengthening the nonviolent resistance and to discouraging like paramilitary secret societies who have taken to using violence to drive out tithe-collectors and to intimidate collaborators. He says, “I maintain the right which [Irish Catholics] have of withholding, in a manner consistent with the law and their duty as subjects, the payment of tithe in kind or in money until it is extorted from them by the operation of the law.”

Given Doyle’s prior experience in education, his major contribution is arguably in helping the establishment of National Schools across Ireland from 1831, the initiative of Edward Smith-Stanley, Chief Secretary for Ireland, which are initially started with a UK government grant of £30,000. The proposed system is ahead of state provision for education in England or Scotland at that time. This Model School prototype is, in some respects, experimental. His involvement is a sign of his practicality and foresight.

Doyle makes statements on other issues: the theological status of ‘non-Catholic’ Christians, freedom to convert to Protestantism, mixed marriages and, as already mentioned, on the union of Catholics and Anglicans. On this last issue he is asked to resign by Rome and is eventually allowed to continue after agreeing not to speak on the issue again.

The construction of Carlow Cathedral of the Assumption crowns Doyle’s career, being started in 1828 and finished at the end of November 1833. He falls ill for a number of months before dying on June 15, 1834. He is buried in his new cathedral. A sculpture, by John Hogan, in memorial to Doyle is finished in 1839.

Several biographies are written on Doyle before 1900 and his influence on the later Irish Catholic bishops in the period 1834-1900 is considerable. He had proved that negotiations with government could be beneficial to his church, his congregation, and its finances.