DUBLIN is to have a Roman Catholic cathedral for the first time in half a millennium, after Pope Leo XIV designated St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral as the official Cathedral Church of the Archdiocese of Dublin.
The announcement was made by the Archbishop of Dublin, The Most Reverend Dermot Farrell, during Mass on 14 November — the bicentenary of the church’s dedication and the feast of the city’s patron, St Laurence O’Toole.
The decision brings to an end one of the longest-running anomalies of the Reformation in Ireland. Before the 16th century, Dublin’s cathedral was Christ Church, with St Patrick’s serving as a second cathedral of the medieval diocese.
After the English Reformation, both buildings became Church of Ireland cathedrals: today, St Patrick’s is the National Cathedral and Christ Church is the Diocesan Cathedral. This left Roman Catholics in the capital without a cathedral of their own.
This absence was compounded for more than two centuries by the Penal Laws, which systematically restricted Roman Catholic religious, civil, and economic life across Ireland. Catholics were barred from holding public office, teaching, entering the professions, or openly practising their faith; church construction was heavily curtailed, and Roman Catholic clergy operated under strict legal constraints. The laws shaped Irish Catholicism until their gradual relaxation in the late 18th century.
Only then could Dublin’s Roman Catholic community begin planning a cathedral. St Mary’s opened in 1825 as a pro tempore — or temporary — solution while a permanent cathedral was envisaged. Although long-regarded as the de facto Catholic cathedral, its status was never formally recognised, and successive efforts to build a purpose-built cathedral elsewhere ultimately came to nothing.
Pope Leo’s decree finally settles the matter. The church will now be known simply as St Mary’s Cathedral. The Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Michael Jackson, welcomed the announcement, calling it “a happy day and noteworthy occasion” for Christians across the city, which now has three cathedrals.
