Contributors: 4

In 1935 to be Catholic was to be Irish, and the hierarchy ruled its flock with a firm doctrinal hand and an unchallenged tribal authority - no one more so than Daniel Mannix, the venerable Cork-born archbishop of Melbourne. Tall, gaunt and magisterial, Mannix was already ancient. Born in 1864, he had become a contentious ecclesiastical figure in the Irish nationalist movement. Shipped to Australia, his stand against conscription led to demands for his deportation. In 1920, the Royal Navy prevented him landing in his insurgent homeland and he returned to Australia,...