Dublin’s Pro Cathedral, St Mary’s, has been officially designated as the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin by Pope Leo XIV.
Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Farrell said: “It is with great joy that I am pleased to announce that the Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, has consented to my request and has approved by decree that St Mary’s be designated as the Cathedral Church of our Archdiocese.”
The Pro - short for Pro Tempore - prefix to the 200-year-old St Mary’s indicated its temporary status pending long-standing plans to build a new Catholic cathedral in the capital.
The church, on Marlborough Street, will henceforth be known as St Mary’s Cathedral.
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As the penal laws persecuting Catholics were relaxed in the later 18th century, the Pro Cathedral site was bought in 1803. The completed building was dedicated 200 years ago on November 14th, 1825, feast day of diocesan patron St Laurence O’Toole, who was canonised 800 years ago this year.
Brief plans by Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese to have the Pro Cathedral designated a basilica, with St Andrew’s on Westland Row becoming the cathedral, were dropped following protests.
In June 2024, Archbishop Farrell announced he was to ask the late Pope Francis - who visited in 2018 during his trip to Ireland - to designate St Mary’s as the cathedral of the archdiocese as part of “a twin pillar strategy for the centre of Dublin” and to designate St Andrew’s “a minor basilica”.
That would also have seen St Andrew’s developed as the second part of the twin pillar strategy. This, he said then, “reflects the reality of distinct communities with different profiles of economic and social activity north and south of the Liffey”.
In June 2023, Archbishop Farrell had announced that Vatican permission was to be sought to have the Pro Cathedral, north of the Liffey, elevated to the status of a basilica while St Andrew’s, south of the Liffey, would become the city’s cathedral. This planned change was due to “the limitations of the St Mary’s building and complex”, he said.
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That announcement was followed by protests from people in Dublin’s north inner city parishes at what they interpreted as a downgrading in the status of their local cathedral. The issue was taken up at meetings of Dublin City Council.
In June of last year, Archbishop Farrell said the new proposed twin-pillar strategy was not to take place.
A cathedral is the seat (from the Latin “cathedra”, referring to the chair) of a diocese’s bishop and his (or her, in the case of Church of Ireland Bishop of Meath and Kildare, Pat Storey) main church.
Pope Leo’s announcement brings to three the number of cathedrals in Dublin city, with the two others belonging to the Church of Ireland, the post-Reformation State church until 1869 when it was disestablished by Westminster.
St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin remains the Church of Ireland’s national cathedral, while Christ Church is the cathedral of its Dublin and Glendalough dioceses.
The Pro Cathedral was always a “provisional” Cathedral, the intention being to build a “proper” one when time and money allowed.
Even the formidable John Charles McQuaid, who became Archbishop of Dublin in 1940, was frustrated in his efforts to build a cathedral on a grand scale and worthy of the capital at Dublin’s Merrion Square.
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The site there was bought by the Catholic Church in 1930 for £100,000 (€113,167). However, most of the funds collected for the new cathedral at Merrion Square was spent on new churches in the then rapidly growing archdiocese.
In 1974, Archbishop McQuaid’s successor Archbishop Dermot Ryan transferred ownership of the Merrion Square site to the city of Dublin, which opened it to the public and renamed it Archbishop Ryan Park.
In 2009, following publication of the Murphy Commission report which investigated the handling of clerical child sexual abuse cases in the archdiocese, and in which Archbishop Ryan was criticised, it was renamed Merrion Square Park by the city council.
The Pro Cathedral is unusual in that it was built before 1829, the year of Catholic Emancipation. It was constructed between 1803 and 1825, albeit on a side street off the city’s main thoroughfare Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street), as penal laws banning Catholicism were relaxed.
Following the Easter Rising of 1916 it was suggested that the burnt-out General Post Office might be a suitable location for Dublin’s Catholic cathedral, a view supported by W T Cosgrave, then president of the executive council of the Irish Free State.
