PAUL

See also:

• CULLEN
• PAUL CULLEN (1803–1878)
• CULLEN, W
• CULLEN, WILLIAM (1710-179o)

CULLEN (1803–1878)  , cardinal and archbishop of Dublin, was born near Ballytore, Co . Kildare, and educated first at the Quaker school at Carlow and afterwards at Rome, where he joined the . Urban College of the Propaganda and, after passing a brilliant course, was ordained in 1829 . He then became vice-rector, and afterwards rector, of the Irish National College in Rome; and during the Mazzini revolution of 1848 he was rector of the Urban College, saving the property under the protection of the American flag . In 1849, on the strong recommendation of Archbishop John MacHale of Tuam, Cullen was nominated as successor to the primatial see of Armagh; and, on his return to Ireland, presided as papal delegate at the national council of Thurles in the August of 185o . Taking a strong line on the educational question which was then agitating Ireland, he took a leading part in the national movement of 1850-1852, and at first supported the Tenant Rights League . In May 1852 he was translated to Dublin, and soon a divergence of opinion broke out between him and the more ardent Nationalists under Archbishop MacHale . When the Irish university was started, with Newman, appointed by Cullen, at its head, the scheme was wrecked by the personal opposition to the archbishop of Dublin . As time went on, his distrust of the national movement grew deeper; and in 1853 he sternly forbade his clergy to take part publicly in politics, and for this he was denounced by the Tablet newspaper . His own political opinion had best be told in his own words . " Fqr thirty years I have studied the revolution on the continent, and for nearly thirty years I have watched the Nationalist movement in Ireland . It is tainted at its sources with the revolutionary spirit .

If any

attempt is made to abridge the rights and liberties of the Catholic Church in Ireland, it will not be by the English government nor by a ` No Popery ' cry in England, but by the revolutionary and irreligious Nationalists of Ireland " (Purcell's Life of Manning, ii . 61o) . Cullen, therefore, while an ardent patriot, was consistently an opponent of Fenianism . He was made cardinal in 1866, being the first Irish cardinal . Energetic as an administrator, churches and schools rose throughout his diocese; and the excellent Mater Misericordiae Hospital and the seminary at Clonlife are lasting memorials of his zeal . He took part in the Vatican Council as an ardent infallibilist . In 1873 he was defendant in a libel action brought against him by the Rev . R . O'Keeffe, parish priest of Callan, on account of two sentences of ecclesiastical censure pronounced by the cardinal as papal delegate . The damages were laid at £ro,000 . Three of the four judges allowed the defence of the cardinal to be valid; but it was held that the papal rescript upon which he relied for his extraordinary powers as delegate was illegal under statute; and the lord chief justice decided that the plaintiff could not renounce his natural and civil liberty . After several days' trial, during which Cullen was submitted to a very close examination, the verdict was given for the plaintiff with ;d. damages .

The cardinal died in Dublin on the 24th of

October 1878 . (E .