Moran, Patrick Francis
MORAN, PATRICK FRANCIS
Cardinal, archbishop of Sydney, Australia; b. Leighlinbridge, Ireland, Sept. 16, 1830; d. Sydney, Aug. 16, 1911. After education at the Irish College, Rome, he was ordained (March 1853) and became vice rector of the Irish College (1856–66). In 1866 he returned to Ireland to become private secretary to his uncle, Cardinal Paul cullen, professor of Sacred Scripture at Clonliffe College, and founder of the Irish Ecclesiastical Record. In March of 1872 he was consecrated co-adjutor bishop of Ossory, succeeding to the diocese in August. In March of 1884 he succeeded Roger Bede vaughan in the see of sydney and became cardinal (1885). Cardinal Moran was a powerful and creative prelate in the development of the Church in Australia. As a scholar, statesman, and democrat with wide interests, he was an enlightened leader who influenced both Church and State in a critical and constructive period of the country's history. He presided over three plenary councils (1885, 1895, and 1905). He established two seminaries for native clergy, ordained 500 priests, consecrated 14 bishops, and dedicated 500 churches, including nine cathedrals, in Australia and New Zealand. In his own diocese he erected Catholic churches, schools, and other institutions to the value of 1½ million pounds sterling and constantly appealed for justice to Catholics in education, claiming state aid for secular
education imparted in Catholic schools. In public life Cardinal Moran gave Australians a vision of emerging nationhood founded on social justice. He actively supported the movement for the federation of the six colonies and the foundation of the Commonwealth of Australia. He applied the encyclical rerum novarum to local problems and encouraged the new Australian Labor party, then regarded by conservatives as socialist, and supported the strikers in the industrial conflicts of the 1890s. With Cardinal Manning in England and Cardinal Gibbons in the United States, Cardinal Moran was one of the pioneers of Catholic social movements in the English-speaking world. His published works include Essays on the Origin, Doctrine, and Discipline of the Early Irish Church (1864) and History of the Catholic Archbishops of Dublin (1864). He edited the Pastoral Letters of Cardinal Cullen and wrote many pamphlets on religious, biographical, and sociological questions. His main Australian publication is a 1,200-page History of the Catholic Church in Australasia (1895).
Bibliography: s. e. fryer, The Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900, 63 v. (London 1885–1900) 2 (1901–11) 645–646. Who Was Who (1897–1915) 504. Concise Dictionary of Irish Biography (1937) 159. e. m. o'brien, Australian Encyclopedia 10 v. (1958) 6:148–149.
[j. g. murtagh]