Biography
Book Details

Prince of the Church

Patrick Francis Moran, 1830-1911

Philip Ayres

This is the first biography of Patrick Francis Moran (1830-1911), Cardinal of Sydney, based on extensive research in Australia, Italy and Ireland.

Opinion

“Commissioned by Cardinal George Pell, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, and largely based on Patrick Francis Moran’s diaries from 1850 until 1911, Prince of the Church is one of the most entertaining clerical biographies since Tom Boland’s brilliant 1986 study of Queensland’s long-serving archbishop James Duhig.” Ross Fitzgerald, Weekend Australian, 04/08/2007

“Philip Ayres’ biography is written with a keen sense of his subject’s flaws, manifested through the odd sardonic aside but with respect for his undoubted strengths.”
Age, 08/09/2007

About this Title

Prince of the Church is the first biography of Cardinal Moran.

Moran and his conflict-ridden worlds come alive as Philip Ayres exploits sixty-one years of unpublished diaries. He reveals a man of contradictions: self-contained, private, hard of access, yet forceful and determined in pursuit of his ends; pious and devout, yet proud, ambitious, and ruthless with his enemies.

As the first cardinal appointed to Australia, Patrick Francis Moran (1830-1911) gave his Church a strength of leadership and authority not seen again in a Sydney archbishop for a century.

Born in Ireland in 1830, Moran was brought up in Rome and witnessed the Roman Revolution of 1848, including the momentous and violent events of the risorgimento, the movement for Italian unity. The sounds of exploding hand-bombs and anti-clerical demonstrations broke the quiet of his archival researches into Irish ecclesiastical history.

In 1866 he returned to Ireland and in 1872 was made Bishop of Ossory (at Kilkenny). As the movement for Home Rule and land reform became revolutionary and violent, Moran was pressured into articulating an increasingly radical nationalism.

Appointed Archbishop of Sydney in 1884, he was promoted Cardinal the following year. He was prominent in the movement for Federation, running for election to the 1897-98 Federal Convention, and influenced the policy direction of the Labor Party under John Watson. Moran spoke out forcefully on moral and religious issues, relishing the sectarian print wars he often started.

Prince of the Church is a definitive account of Cardinal Moran.

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Preface
Part 1 Italy: Era of the Risorgimento
1 Bound for Rome: 1830-42
2 Student at the stormfront: 1842-54
3 Scholar and apprentice: 1854-66

Part 2 Ireland: Age of rebellion
4 Secretary to Cardinal Cullen: 1866-71
5 Schism in Ossory: 1871-75
6 Ecclesiastical politician: 1875-80
7 Tide of rebellion: 1880-84

Part 3 Australia: Era of Federation
8 New broom in Sydney: 1884-85
9 Prince of the Church: 1885-88
10 Pushing the bounds of power: 1888-93
11 Federationist: 1893-97
12 Denis O'Haran, co-respondent: 1897-1901
13 Constructing a Catholic-Labor entente: 1901-05
14 More politics: 1905-08
15 To the feet of the master: 1909-11

Notes
Bibliography and iconography
Index

About the Author

Philip Ayres was head of English at Monash University, professorial fellow and visiting professor at Boston University, and visiting professor at Vassar College. A meticulous researcher and experienced biographer, his previous books include Owen Dixon, Mawson: A Life, Malcolm Fraser: A Biography and Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (London) and the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

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978-0-522-85373-5