When entering Armidale’s Catholic Cathedral through the front doors, most people notice the name of Cardinal Moran, which is in large print on the huge foundation stone. This week is the centenary of his death. He had a close association with Armidale and walked tall on the Australian stage, so his story is worth telling.
Moran was a child in Ireland for 12 years, a student and priest in Rome for 24, a bishop in Ireland for 18, and an archbishop in Australia for 27. Tony Cahill, who had been an historian at Sydney University, spent much of his career researching Moran’s life and labours. Although Cahill died without his book being published, an excellent synopsis is available online via the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and readers could profitably peruse it. This week’s column will mostly focus on Cardinal Moran’s connections with Armidale.
Born on September 16, 1830, at Leighlinbridge, Carlow, Ireland, Patrick Francis Moran was an orphan by the age of 12. The young Moran was taken to Rome and raised by his uncle, Paul Cullen, who was the rising star in the Catholic Church. Both men learnt how to do things the Roman way and their promotions were predicted. Patrick Moran was ordained a priest on March 19, 1853, when Father Tim McCarthy, a young newly-ordained priest, was arriving in Sydney from Ireland, and soon became the first resident Catholic priest in what is now northern NSW.
After years in Rome, the uncle and nephew returned to Ireland where Cullen became the Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin and his nephew, who been made a Monsignor, served as his secretary. Moran was consecrated a bishop on March 5, 1872, and soon became Bishop of Ossory, an ancient diocese centred on Kilkenny (between Dublin and Cork on the eastern side of Ireland). Meanwhile, in February 1872, Armidale’s first Catholic Cathedral had been opened.
In 1876 Moran was in Rome on behalf of the Irish bishops, and was very helpful to our first bishop, Timothy O’Mahony, by showing the authorities in Rome that his principal accuser in his troubles was a scoundrel who had been run out of Ireland. Moran’s letters to Cardinal Cullen about the matter were very useful when I wrote about Bishop O’Mahony’s saga. He was cleared of the charges but never returned to Australia. He was succeeded by a Capuchin friar, Elzear Torreggiani, who had demonstrated his competence in dealing with the Irish.
When the Archdiocese of Sydney became vacant with the sudden death of Archbishop Roger Bede Vaughan on August 18, 1883, Bishop Torreggiani recognised the need for an Irish Archbishop in Sydney, not an Englishman, and strongly supported the appointment of Moran. He had been involved in Australian affairs for many years and was the outstanding candidate. Moran got the job.
Arriving on September 8, 1884, he was called to Rome in May 1885 and on July 27 was created Australia’s first Cardinal – a confirmation of Moran’s high personal standing in Rome and an affirmation of Pope Leo XIII’s belief in the importance of the new worlds.
Armidale was one of the first places Cardinal Moran visited when he returned to Australia. In January 1886, 2000 people greeted him at the Armidale railway station and escorted him in a torch-light procession to the Cathedral for a liturgical welcome. Next day he opened the chapel at the Ursuline Convent, and then presided at a ceremony in the Cathedral when five postulants became nuns of the Ursuline Order. A dinner for 60 gentlemen became a speechfest, with speakers outlining the progress of religion in Armidale and culminating with Cardinal Moran making Bishop Torreggiani an honorary Irishman.
Next day the visitors and locals formed a procession of 20 buggies and horsemen, and went to Uralla where Cardinal Moran blessed and opened St Joseph’s Convent, listened to more speeches and enjoyed a community luncheon. On the way back to Armidale the Cardinal was shown through the extensive orchard at ‘Orchardfield’, which had been established by the Jackes family. Later there was a concert with entertainment provided by the Catholic school children. The newspaper reports of all these functions shed light on how the local community at that time welcomed distinguished visitors.
Cardinal Moran’s other visits to Armidale included one in May 1903 when he consecrated Monsignor Patrick Joseph O’Connor as a bishop. When Pope Leo died in 1903, Cardinal Moran failed to reach Rome in time for the conclave that elected Pope Pius X. Ill health prevented the Cardinal from returning to Armidale early in 1904 for the funeral of Bishop Torreggiani, who had died on January 28, aged 74 years.
A prolific writer, Moran’s publications include his massive History of the Catholic Church in Australasia (1895), which was essentially a compilation of source material, but organised with specific apologetic and polemic aims. The chapter on the Diocese of Armidale was the only useful published history on that topic until recent times, when it was superseded by various scholarly works written by university graduates.
Through the influence of Cardinal Moran the De La Salle Brothers came to Armidale in 1905 and provided education to thousands of boys at the Catholic primary school and De La Salle College, and later, from 1975 at the coeducational O’Connor High School, until withdrawing from Armidale at the end of 1991.
Cardinal Moran was associated with many of the Catholic cathedrals in NSW, including St Mary’s and St Joseph’s in Armidale, where he laid the foundation stone on February 5, 1911, when he was aged 80. That story was told in Column No 32, dated February 2, 2011.
When news of Cardinal Moran’s sudden death on the morning of August 16, 1911 reached Armidale, George Nott, the builder, ordered his men to stop work on the new Cathedral as a mark of respect to the late prelate, and the bell in the old Cathedral tolled throughout the day.
As a boy growing up in Armidale in the 1950s I knew many people who vividly recalled the Cardinal’s death. There was a story about an old Irishman in Armidale who used to have the newspaper read to him by his son, and when he read out the headlines: ‘Sudden Death of Cardinal Moran’, the old man interjected: “To be sure, he must have been poisoned by the Protestants!” His comment reflects the strong sectarian feeling of the time and the high esteem in which Cardinal Moran was held throughout the country, including Armidale, where he was personally known to so many.
Cardinal Moran was a high profile and politically prominent Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, from his arrival in Australia in 1884 until his death in 1911, and is the subject of the recently published biography, Prince of the Church, written by Philip Ayers. Very readable and generally comprehensive, the biography has some disappointing omissions including an account of the Cardinal’s death.
In August 1911, after a visit to Perth, Cardinal Moran returned to Sydney and opened a new presbytery at Chatswood, and then retired to his palace at Manly for a few days’ rest. On the morning of August 16 he did not appear for the morning Mass, so a message was sent to his coadjutor bishop, Michael Kelly (who had the right of succession) who was across the road in St Patrick’s Seminary. He came to the palace and found Moran’s bedroom door locked from the inside. Dr Kelly climbed a step ladder, looked through the window and saw the Cardinal’s body dead on the floor. Turning to the gathering crowd, Dr Kelly pompously declared “We are now the Archbishop of Sydney”. Cardinal Moran was given an enormous funeral. His body is now buried in the crypt of St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney.
Another omission in Ayers’ biography of Cardinal Moran is his association with rural dioceses such as Armidale. Some of that story is told in my column this week. Generations have known Cardinal Moran’s name in Armidale because it is literally writ large on the foundation stone near the front door of the magnificent Catholic Cathedral.
