22 Facts About Thomas Croke

Thomas Croke was important in the Irish nationalist movement, especially as a Champion of the Irish National Land League in the 1880s.

Thomas Croke was born in Castlecor, County Cork, in 1824.

Thomas Croke was the third of eight children of William Croke, an estate agent, and his wife, Isabella Plummer, daughter of an aristocratic Protestant family who disowned her following her Catholic marriage in 1817.

Two of Thomas Croke's brothers entered the priesthood, while two sisters became nuns.

Thomas Croke was educated in Charleville, County Cork and at the Irish College in Paris and the Irish College in Rome, winning academic distinctions including a doctorate of divinity with honours.

Thomas Croke's brother, James, was a priest and served in the Pacific Northwest helping to found several churches including St Joseph's Catholic Church in Oregon Territory.

The Irish radical William O'Brien said that Thomas Croke fought on the barricades in Paris during the 1848 French Revolution.

Thomas Croke returned to Ireland and spent the next 23 years working there.

In 1857 Thomas Croke became wealthy due to inheriting the fortunes of his uncle James Thomas Croke who had gained his riches in the Colony of Victoria in Australia.

Thomas Croke attended the First Vatican Council as the theologian to the Bishop of Cloyne in 1870.

In 1870, Thomas Croke was appointed Bishop of Auckland in New Zealand, helped by the strong recommendation of his former professor, Paul Cullen, by then-Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin, who was largely responsible for filling the Australasian Catholic church with fellow Irishmen.

Thomas Croke arrived in Auckland on 17 December 1870 in the City of Melbourne.

Thomas Croke devoted some of his considerable personal wealth to rebuilding diocesan finances and took advantage of Auckland's economic growth following the development of the Thames goldfields to further his aims, ensuring that all surplus income from parishes at Thames and Coromandel was passed on to him, and he instituted a more rigorous system for the Sunday collection at St Patrick's Cathedral.

Thomas Croke imported Irish clergy to serve the growing Catholic community, and with Patrick Moran, the first Catholic Bishop of Dunedin, he tried to secure an Irish monopoly on future episcopal appointments in New Zealand.

Thomas Croke made several journeys to Australia from New Zealand, visiting Sydney, Melbourne and Bathurst in 1872 and Melbourne in 1875 on his way back to Ireland.

Thomas Croke's energies were devoted to saving the souls of the Irish immigrants rather than converting the Maori.

Thomas Croke supported separate Catholic schools and their right to state aid and voiced his opposition to secular education as Auckland's Catholic schools were threatened by the provincial council's Education Act 1872, which helped to create a free, secular and compulsory education system.

On 28 January 1874, after barely three years in office, Thomas Croke departed for Europe, on what was ostensibly a 12-month holiday and he did not return to New Zealand.

Thomas Croke became a member of the Irish hierarchy when he was translated to be Archbishop of Cashel, one of the four Catholic Irish archbishoprics in 1875.

Archbishop Thomas Croke was a strong supporter of Irish nationalism, aligning himself with the Irish National Land League during the Land War, and with the chairman of the Irish Parliamentary Party, Charles Stewart Parnell.

Thomas Croke associated himself with the Temperance Movement of Theobald Mathew and the Gaelic League from its foundation in 1893.

Thomas Croke died at the Archbishop's Palace in Thurles on 22 July 1902, aged 78.