AustLit

Archbishop Mannix was Australia’s most famous churchman, its most famous Irishman, one of its great troublemakers. As Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne from the First World War to the Nineteen-Sixties, he was a tribal leader and political figure as much as a spiritual leader.

A very public figure, equally loved and hated. But privately an enigma.

The REAL Archbishop Mannix: from the sources, reveals Mannix through his own words, his own actions and the actions taken against him.”

'Arriving in San Francisco in June 1920, on his way to Rome to call on the Pope, Mannix wasted no time in making inflammatory remarks about the English. Addressing the Catholic summer school at Plattsburg, New York, he said, “There is no use mincing words-Ireland is ruled by an alien Government. England was your enemy; she is your enemy today; she will be your enemy for all time.”

'Following his arrest at sea on his way to Ireland, he said, “Since the Jutland battle, the British Navy has not scored a success comparable to the capture of the Archbishop of Melbourne, and not a single British sailor had lost his life. It has rendered the British Government the laughing stock of the world. I still claim the right to go to Ireland and intend to press the claim by any means in my power”.

'On a visit to the workers at Broken Hill in 1922, Mannix said, “Let the Church approve no social order … in which there is a great discrepancy between the luxury and wealth of a privileged few, and the wretchedness and material indigence of the many . . . The work before the Catholic Laborites is to capture the Labor machine.”

'He strongly held the view that, “When a man becomes a priest he does not cease to be a citizen, he has a right to his own opinions like other citizens.”' (Publication summary)