Cullen, PAUL

Cullen, PAUL, a great Irish churchman, was born near Ballitore, in County Kildare, April 27, 1803. After a brilliant course in the Collegio Urbano of the Propaganda at Rome, he was ordained priest in 1829, and filled in succession the offices of vice-rector and rector of the Irish College in Rome, and rector of the Propaganda College. During the period of Mazzini's power in Rome in 1848, Cullen astutely saved the property of his college by placing it under American protection. At the close of 1849 the three names sent up to the pope having been passed over, Cullen unexpectedly found himself nominated to the archbishopric of Armagh and primacy of Ireland. He was consecrated early in the following year, and at once commenced a vigorous and uncompromisingly ultramontane reign of eight-and-twenty years, in which he established lasting memorials to his memory in new churches, schools, convents, and hospitals, such as the Mater Misericordiae. He denounced mixed education in every form, and from the outset opposed all revolutionary and anti-constitutional opposition to the crown. His vigorous denunciations of Fenianism made him many enemies among the more hot-headed Irishmen, but greatly increased the respect of English Protestants for a church that would make no terms with crime, even when committed by its own children. At the Synod of Thurles in 1851, principally by Cullen's persuasion, the establishment of a Catholic university in Ireland was recommended. Translated to Dublin in 1852, he was created a cardinal priest in 1866, the first Irishman who had reached that elevated rank. One of the majority at the Vatican Council, he long enjoyed the familiar friendship of Pope Pius IX. He died at Dublin soon after his return from a journey to Rome, October 24, 1878.