Patrick O'Donnell (cardinal)

Catholic Archbishop of Armagh
the Australian Catholic archbishop

Patrick Joseph Cardinal O'Donnell (28 November 1856 – 22 November 1927) was an Irish senior prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Armagh from 1924 until his death, and was made a cardinal in 1925.

Patrick Joseph O'Donnell was born in Glenties, County Donegal on 28 November 1855, a son of Daniel O'Donnell, a farmer, and his wife, Mary (née Breslin). He was one of nine children in a family that claimed descent from the O'Donnells of Tyrconnell. O'Donnell was ordained a priest on 29 June 1880. He attended Secondary School in Letterkenny, and later studied at the Catholic University of Dublin (1873–75) and at Maynooth. He was ordained to the priesthood on 29 June 1880. In that same year, he was appointed to the staff of St Patrick's College, Maynooth, holding the chairs of Dogmatic and Moral Theology. In 1884, he became dean of the revived post graduate Dunboyne Institute and in 1885 was awarded a Doctor of Sacred Theology. From his desk in Maynooth, he poured out a continuous stream of articles on moral theology and canon law.

He was appointed Bishop of Raphoe on 26 February 1888, making him the youngest bishop in the world at the time and was consecrated by Michael Logue on 3 April 1888 in Letterkenny. O'Donnell undertook, and completed, a prodigious building project in his diocese the superbly sited neo Gothic (with Romanesque details) cathedral, overlooked by a house for bishop and clergy (1891–1901); St Eunan's Diocesan College (1906); the Presentation Monastery and Loreto schools and an extension to Loreto Convent, all in Letterkenny. He was appointed coadjutor Archbishop of Armagh on 14 January 1922 and succeeded Cardinal Michael Logue on 19 November 1924. On 14 December 1925, Pope Pius XI made O'Donnell a Cardinal.

Cardinal O'Donnell died on 22 October 1927 in Carlingford, County Louth.

St Connell's Museum in his home town of Glenties has a display about his life.