CULLEN, PAUL

Cardinal, archbishop of Dublin; b. Ballitore, County Kildare, Ireland, April 29, 1803; d. Dublin, Oct. 24, 1878. After studying at a local Quaker school and at Carlow College, he entered (1820) the College of Propaganda in Rome, where he was ordained (1829) and then appointed professor of Sacred Scripture and Hebrew. Named rector of the Irish College, Rome (1832), he acted until 1850 as agent of the Irish and Australian bishops and worked to counteract British influence at the Vatican.

In 1840 the Holy See commissioned Cullen to examine the Irish national school system, which was occasioning serious division among the Irish bishops. Rome followed his recommendation and dispatched a rescript that left each bishop free to accept or disallow these schools in his diocese. The hierarchy was also at variance concerning the Queen's colleges, which Cullen strongly opposed. Rome condemned these colleges and urged the bishops to establish a Catholic university (1847). From Rome Cullen organized help for his starving countrymen during the great famine (1847). When the Roman Republic set itself up and replaced the papal government (February 1849), Cullen became rector of the College of Propaganda at the request of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda. When the revolutionary triumvirate ordered the college dissolved, Cullen appealed to the United States minister for protection of the American students and thereby saved the institution.

Cullen succeeded William Crolly as archbishop of Armagh (1850), an appointment designed to strengthen the unity of the Irish hierarchy. Following his consecration in Rome, Cullen was appointed apostolic delegate to Ireland and ordered to convene a national council, the first since the 12th century. The Synod of Thurles, which resulted, convened on Aug. 22, 1850.

Memory of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and the Roman Revolution of 1848, as well as theological considerations, nurtured Cullen's hatred of revolution and secret societies. He regarded the Young Ireland and Fenian leaders as sowers of dissension and enemies of Ireland, although he sympathized with their sufferings and saved Thomas F. Burke, the Fenian leader, from hanging. Cullen advocated constitutional action as the best remedy for Ireland's grievances and pleaded for national unity. He was a defender of the rights of tenants, a champion of poorhouse reform, and an advocate of industrial schools. His testimony before the Poor Law Commission in 1861 and the Powis Commission on education in 1869 helped to produce substantial improvements.

The appointment of John Henry newman (1854) as first rector of the Catholic University of Ireland, founded in 1854, was a result of Cullen's influence. Because of the government's refusal to grant a charter, the university led a struggling existence; but the medical school founded by Newman and Cullen was eminently successful, and their educational ideals were substantially realized when the National University was founded in 1908.

Cullen labored to improve the morale and preparation of the Irish clergy, opening a diocesan seminary at Clonliffe in 1859. In 1866 he became Ireland's first cardinal, and he took a leading part in vatican council i as a framer of the definition of papal infallibility. He is buried at Clonliffe.

Bibliography: p. cullen, Pastoral Letters and Other Writings, ed. p. f. moran, 3 v. (Dublin 1882). p. j. corish, "Cardinal Cullen and Archbishop MacHale," The Irish Ecclesiastical Record 91 (1959) 393–408. j. f. whyte, "Fresh Light on Archbishop Cullen and the Tenant League," ibid. 99 (1963) 170–176. p. macsuibhne, Paul Cullen and His Contemporaries (Naas, Ire. 1961–).

[p. macsuibhne]