Patrick Comerford
During my visit to Dublin last week, I visited three churches in the north inner city: Saint Mary’s Cathedral, known for almost 200 years as the ‘Pro-Cathedral’, on Marlborough Street; Saint Francis Xavier Church, the Jesuit-run church popularly known as Gardiner Street Church, between Mountjoy Square and Dorset Street, which I wrote about on Wednesday (3 December 2025); and the former Welsh Church on Talbot Street, which I wrote about last night (6 December 2025).
Saint Mary’s Cathedral was known for 200 years as Saint Mary's Pro-Cathedral, until it was designated as the Roman Catholic cathedral for the Archdiocese of Dublin last month (November 2025).
Until 2025, Dublin had two cathedrals, both belonging to the Church of Ireland: Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, which is the National Cathedral of the Church of Ireland, and Christ Church Cathedral, which is the diocesan cathedral of Dublin and Glendalough. In contrast, the Roman Catholic Church had no cathedral in Dublin until last month (November 2025).
Last year, the Greek Orthodox church on Arbour Hill, the Church of the Annunciation, began serving as the cathedral of the new Holy Orthodox Metropolis of Ireland, established in 2024 under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and with the appointment of Metropolitan Iakovos. Then this year, the Romanian Orthodox Church upgraded the former Christ Church on Leeson Park as its cathedral in Dublin.
Pope Leo XIV granted cathedral status to Saint Mary’s last month (November 2025). Until then it was a ‘pro-cathedral’, meaning it was a provisional or acting cathedral. It had that title officially since 1886, although Saint Mary’s Church had used that designation unofficially since the 1820s.
Saint Mary’s Cathedral dates back to the repeal of the Penal Laws in the early 19th century. But for centuries, Roman Catholics in Dublin had been without a cathedral.
Many of the Penal Laws were cancelled by the late 18th century and early 19th century, and a number of early churches were built in the city centre, including Saint Francis Xavier Church, Gardiner Street (1829) and Saint Nicholas of Myra, Francis Street (1829-1834).
Saint Mary’s name is a reminder of Saint Mary’s Abbey, the great Benedictine and later Cistercian house in Dublin founded in the 12th century. Saint Mary’s was closed in 1539 at the Dissolution of the monastic houses during the Tudor Reformations. Marlborough Street, named after the 1st Duke of Marlborough, was the furthest eastern boundary of the abbey lands that were broken up and built on.
A new Church of Ireland parish of Saint Mary’s was formed in 1697, and Archbishop Edmund Byrne, who was in hiding, formed the Roman Catholic Parish of Saint Mary 10 years later in 1707. Father John Linegar (1671-1757), who had been ordained in Lisbon in 1694, became the first pastor of the new Saint Mary’s parish, a parish without church or chapel. He opened Saint Mary’s Chapel on Liffey Street in 1729.
Although it was listed officially as ‘Liffey Street mass-house’, it was a fine chapel with an altar, pulpit, paintings, confessionals, two galleries, several pews and two ‘sprinkling pots of black marble in chapel yard.’ One of these ‘sprinkling pots’ or holy water fonts is now inserted in the wall of the cathedral.
John Linegar became Archbishop of Dublin in 1734, and died in office on 21 June 1757.
When John Thomas Troy, a Dominican friar and Bishop of Ossory, was appointed Archbishop of Dublin in 1786, he petitioned Pope Pius VI to make Saint Mary’s his mensal parish, and he began to plan for a ‘dignified spacious church’ in a central location. Troy formed a committee that bought Annesley House, Lord Annesley’s Dublin townhouse on the corner of Marlborough Street and Elephant Lane (later Tyrone Place and now Cathedral Street), close to Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street) in 1803. The site was chosen as the location for a new cathedral, pending the erection, when funds and the law allowed.
Troy announced a public competition in 1814, inviting designs for the new church. Lord Annesley’s townhouse was demolished in June 1814. The new church, built between 1815 and 1825, combines a number of styles: the exterior is in Greek revival style, while the interior is more Renaissance in style, based on the Church of Saint-Philippe du Roule of Paris.
Some believe the architect, known on the plans only by the initial ‘P’, was John Sweetman from Dublin, who had been living in exile in Paris since the 1798 Rising. A more likely opinion is that, although Sweetman sent the plans to Dublin, the architect was the French architect Louis Hippolyte le Bas, whose Church of Notre Dame de Lorette in Paris closely resembles Sain Mary’s, and that his identiry was kept secret as le Bas was Napoleon’s architect and Britain was at war with France.
The design of Saint Mary’s combines a variety of styles: the exterior is Greek revival at its best, the front portico is a copy of the Temple of Theseus or Theseion in Athens, and the fluted Doric columns rise without bases from the podium or floor of the church; the interior is more Roman in style than Grecian.
A major alteration was the addition of a dome. One objector declared that ‘artistically and practically the dome was a mistake; it is no help to the preacher and constitutes a serious and unhappy departure from the graceful lines and principles of Grecian art.’ Another critic described it as ‘a beautiful deformity’.
A flag was flown from the dome in August 1821 to show that the shell of the building was completed. But money was scare, morale was low and in a renewed fundraising drive, Archbishop Troy, at the age of 83, went collecting from house to house.
The committee passed a resolution that this ‘splendid edifice be considered a National or Metropolitan rather that a Parish Chapel’ and in March 1823 Pope Pius VII sent a gold chalice, commissioned ‘for the new Cathedral being built in Dublin’. Dr Troy died two months later, on 11 May 1823. He had been the driving force behind the project, and his funeral Mass was the first Mass in the unfinished building.
Archbishop Daniel Murray of Dublin celebrated the completion of the Roman Catholic Metropolitan Chapel, as it was then called, 200 years ago on 14 November 1825, the feast of Saint Laurence O’Toole, patron saint of Dublin. The choir was directed by Haydn Corri and sang Mozart’s Grand Mass in C Minor, Ave Verum and Graun’s Te Deum. Most of the Irish hierarchy were present, and the preacher was James ‘JKL’ Doyle, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin. Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847) spoke at the reception afterwards.
To mark the end of the Penal Laws and the legislation for Catholic Emancipation, a special thanksgiving High Mass was celebrated in the cathedral in 1829. It was attended by Daniel O’Connell, who had taken took his seat as MP for Clare, having been elected the previous year.
As the first Catholic Lord Mayor of Dublin in centuries, O’Connell celebrated his election in 1841 by travelling in state to ‘the Pro-Cathedral’ for High Mass. When he died in Genoa on 15 May 1847, his heart was buried in Rome while his body was brought back to Dublin and laid in state in Saint Mary’s for four days before he was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.
State funerals of major political figures there include Michael Collins, former presidents Seán T O’Kelly, Éamon de Valera and Patrick Hillery, and a former Lord Mayor of Dublin, Kathleen Clarke.
Architects who worked on the cathedral over the past 200 years include Sir Richard Morrison and William Virtuvius Morrison, John B Keane, John Bourke, George Papworth and Ralph Byrne. The sculptures on the pediment by Thomas Kirk were completed in 1845 and depict the Virgin Mary flanked by Saint Laurence O’Toole and Saint Kevin of Glendalough.
Archbishop Murray and Cardinal Cullen are commemorated with two monuments in marble, among the finest work of the sculptor by Sir Thomas Farrell (1827-1900). Murray is seen in a kneeling pose. Around the base of the standing figure of Cullen are scenes depicting his life and work as archbishop, including his concern for the sick and poor, for training priests and for Catholic education.
John Hogan and other leading sculptors of the day carved memorials to the benefactors of the diocese. Among the gifts of altar plate is a silver-gilt chalice, paten and cruet set presented in 1856 in honour of Saint Laurence O’Toole by Mary Teresa Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, a descendant of the O’Toole family.
Saint Mary’s was never intended to be anything other than a temporary acting cathedral, until funds were found to build a full cathedral, and a number of locations for a new cathedral were proposed. WT Cosgrave, President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State (the equivalent of taoiseach or prime minister) from 1922 to 1932, once suggested the General Post Office on O’Connell, which had remained a burnt-out shell since the 1916 Rising. But the idea was not acted on and the GPO was restored as a post office.
John Charles McQuaid (1895-1973), who was Archbishop of Dublin in 1940-1972, bought the gardens in Merrion Square with plans to build a cathedral. But his proposals were never acted on and the gardens were eventually handed over to Dublin Corporation and opened to the public. At times, there were suggestions that one of the two Church of Ireland cathedrals in the city might be transferred to the Roman Catholic Church, but this never happened either.
In the meantime, most of the funds collected for building a new cathedral were spent on building new churches in the 1970s and 1980s in a fast-growing diocese.
Pope John Paul visited Saint Mary’s in 1992 and Pope Francis visited in 2018.
Architecturally, the cathedral’s dramatic mixture of Greek and Roman styles has been controversial in the past, with different critics describing it as either an artistic gem or an eyesore.
The main aisle leads up to the High Altar, and behind it is a stained glass window of the Blessed Virgin Mary or Saint Mary. The stucco alto-rilievo of the Ascension is the work of John Smyth, while the High Altar was carved by Peter Turnerelli, a Belfast-born, Dublin-based sculptor with Italian parents.
In preparation for the Centenary of Catholic Emancipation in 1928 and the Eucharistic Congress in 1932, the floor space the church was extended on both sides in another unhappy alteration of John Sweetman’s original design. The elegant portico on the Cathedral Street side was walled up between the Doric columns, and what had once been Saint Kevin’s chapel in the north flank became simply open space within the church.
For most of its time, Saint Mary’s had a massive Victorian altar and reredos by Peter Turnerelli. They were removed in the late 1970s during reordering following the liturgical changes introduced at the second Vatican Council. The architect for these changes was Cathal O’Neill, Professor of Architecture in University College Dublin.
The reredos was removed, leaving just the tabernacle, although the front panel of the original altar was reinstated in the new altar, which was moved to the centre of a new paved area in an expanded sanctuary. The altar rails were also removed. The pulpit was moved too, to a position in a corner of the building.
The cathedral went on fire in the early 1990s, and although the fire was brought under control, there was considerable smoke damage in one corner of the building.
The original organ was built by the Dublin organ builder John White in the late 19th century. The present organ has some of White’s original pipework. The present façade of the organ dates from William Hill’s work around 1900. Later work was carried out by Henry Willis & Co in the 1930s, before JW Walker’s major rebuild in 1971 and a more recent refurbishment in 1995. The newly refurbished organ was inaugurated in a gala concert by Olivier Latry on 20 March 1996.
The organ is one of the finest examples in Ireland of the late 19th century grand Romantic organ, and many great organists have played it: Daniel Chorzempa, Xavier Darasse, Sir David Lumsden, Daniel Roth, Dame Gillian Weir, Arthur Wills, Olivier Latry and others.
The Titular Organist of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Gerard Gillen, was appointed in 1976; David Grealy was appointed Associate Organist in 2017. A chancel organ built by John White is on on the epistle (right) side of the High Altar.
Saint Mary’s is known for the resident choir, the Palestrina Choir, which had its origins in a boys’ choir formed in the 1890s by Vincent O’Brien, and Edward Martyn was the founding sponsor. Pope Pius X promoted the music of Palestrina as the standard to which liturgical music should aspire.
The Palestrina Choir was installed in the cathedral in 1903 and Vincent O’Brien was the director until 1946. The Palestrina Choir has attracted notable singers over the years, including Count John McCormack who was a member in 1904-1905. The present director of the choir is Blánaid Murphy.
During the school term, the Palestrina Choir sings at Sunday morning Solemn Latin Mass (Novus Ordo), Friday Vespers and Benediction (5:15 pm) and Mass (5:45 pm). A girls’ choir was formed in 2009.
More recently, there were proposals to name Saint Andrew’s Church, Westland Row, as the cathedral, but with last month’s decision, Saint Andrew’s has been declared a basilica and Saint Mary’s is now officially the cathedral of the city, the diocese and the archbishop – although it is likely to be known to generations to come in Dublin simply as ‘the Pro’.
As the architectural historian Christine Casey says, it ‘still ranks among the most powerful Greek Revival Church interiors in these islands.’
‘The Dublin Martyrs’, Margaret Ball (1584) and Francis Taylor (1621), bronze figures (2001) by Conall MacCabe (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Further reading:
Christine Casey, Dublin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005, Pevsner Architectural Guides, Buildings of Ireland series).
Peter Costello, Dublin Churches (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1989).
Dermod McCarthy, Saint Mary’s Pro-Cathedral Dublin (Dublin: Eason, 1988, the Irish Heritage series).
