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John Charles McQuaid (July 28 1895-April 7 1973) was a Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland between 1940 and 1971.

John Charles McQuaid was born in Cootehill, County Cavan in 1895. He joined the religious congregation, the Holy Ghost Fathers, where he taught at the highly regarded private Roman Catholic secondary school Blackrock College in Dublin, which educated many senior Irish political and business leaders. As Fr. McQuaid he was close to former Blackrock College teacher and President of the Executive Council (prime minister) Eamon de Valera, and influenced de Valera in the drafting the modern Irish constitution, Bunreacht na hEireann.

In 1940, he was made Archbishop of Dublin. In his period as archbishop he proved a highly influential political figure. His criticism of the controversial Mother and Child Scheme in the early 1950s (aided by political misjudgments by the sponsoring minister, Noel Browne and tensions between Browne and his party leader, Sean MacBride over Browne's behaviour towards other ministers) helped pave the way for the First Inter-Party Government's decision to abandon the scheme, which proposed offering means test-free access to health care for mothers.

There was continuing conflict between McQuaid and deV. In 1946 he supported the national teachers’ strike, to deV’s great annoyance.

McQuaid was never made a cardinal. Joseph Walsh,the Irish minister to the Holy See, had warned the Vatican that if McQuaid was elevated “the Nunico would have endless difficulties, in every sphere of his activities, owing to this deplorable weakness in character, already so well known to the Holy See”.

McQuaid was critical of post-Vatican II Catholicism. When making his automatic offer of retirement from his see to Pope Paul VI, he was stunned to have it accepted, and further stunned when one of his internal church critics, the liberal Dermot Ryan, was appointed to his post instead.

McQuaid died in his private residence in Killiney in Dublin in 1973. He is buried in St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin, the seat of the Roman Catholic Archbishop.

References

• John Whyte – Church and State in Modern Ireland 1923-1979
• Bernard J Canning – Bishops of Ireland 1870-1987
• Patrick Corish – The Irish Catholic Experience
• Dermot Keogh – Ireland and the Vatican. (1995)

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