st Mary's church Staff reporter
There are now no plans for Dublin to have a formally-designated cathedral to replace the ‘Pro’ almost 90 years after a fund for that purpose was established.
According to the financial statements of the ‘Charities of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin’, the Charities Regulatory Authority approved a proposal in July 2015 for money from the diocese’s New Cathedral Fund to be used “for the purpose of the refurbishment, repair, maintenance and operation of St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral as there is no intention to build a new cathedral in the diocese”.
When St Mary’s was consecrated in 1825 it was designated as a ‘pro-cathedral’ since Christ Church Cathedral, although in Anglican hands since the 16th Century, was designated by Pope Alexander III as the city’s cathedral at the request of Dublin’s then archbishop, St Laurence O’Toole.
New cathedral
The fund for building a new cathedral was established in 1930, when Archbishop Edward Byrne paid the Pembroke Estate £100,000 for Merrion Square Park. Plans to build a new cathedral there were, however, abandoned in 1974 when Archbishop Dermot Ryan gave the park to Dublin Corporation.
Although the diocese has no intention of building a new cathedral, neither does it intend for St Mary’s to be formally classed as a cathedral in its own right. “The ‘Pro’ despite its ‘Pro’ status is considered the cathedral of the archdiocese,” a diocesan spokesperson said, continuing, “there are no plans to change.”