Cardinal Paul Cullen (1803-1878)

Born in County Kildare, Paul Cullen he began his priestly studies at age seventeen in Rome’s College of the Propaganda, a seminary for international students. A brilliant scholar, immediately after his ordination he was appointed professor of Hebrew and Sacred Scripture at the Propaganda. From 1832 to 1850, he was Rector of the Irish College in Rome, a school to which Ireland’s best students for the priesthood were sent. In late 1849, he was named Archbishop of Armagh, a position that also made him primate (leader) of the Church in Ireland. He was consecrated in 1850 and sent back to Ireland. One of his first acts was to convene the Synod of Thurles, the first national gathering of Ireland’s bishops since before the Reformation. This succeeded in restoring ecclesiastical discipline to Ireland. His hopes for a national Catholic university based in Dublin, however, were less successful. In 1867, he became the first Irish Cardinal. Cullen’s tenure coincided with a flourishing of Catholic life in Ireland that historians have called the “devotional revolution.” It was a period when churches and schools were built in larger numbers than ever, when vocation of the priesthood and religious life reached unprecedented levels, when Ireland supplied priests for the bulk of the English-speaking world. Cardinal Cullen deserves credit for his part in laying the groundwork for this (still) unprecedented boom of Catholic life.