Background

On 2 June 2024, we posted A Roman Catholic Cathedral in Dublin? which reported that in an homily on  2 June 2024, Dr Dermot Farrell, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, announced:

“I am asking the Holy Father to designate St Mary’s as the Cathedral for Dublin…This will involve having St Mary’s and St Andrew’s as twin pillars for the worthy celebration of Catholic life in Dublin.”

There was then no Roman Catholic cathedral in the Republic of Ireland’s capital city, and there had not been one since the Protestant Reformation. Dublin possessed the Roman Catholic Pro Cathedral of St Mary, and the two Cathedrals of the Church of Ireland; the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity (a.k.a. Christ Church Cathedral) and  St Patrick’s Cathedral. The post reported the development in the plans of the diocese which in 2023 it was announced that the Pro-Cathedral would lose its current status and become a basilica, while St Andrew’s Church, Westland Row, south of the Liffey, would become the city’s cathedral.

Update

On 14 November 2025, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Dermot Farrell, made the announcement during his homily at the mass to mark the bicentenary of the cathedral on the Feast of St Laurence O’ Toole, that Pope Leo XIV had designated St Mary’s Pro Cathedral in Dublin as the city’s official Catholic Cathedral, becoming the first in the capital for 500 years.

Even though Christchurch has been in the possession of the Church of Ireland for nearly five hundred years, it was still viewed by the Roman Catholic Church as the primary official Dublin cathedral, since it was so designated by the pope at the request of the then Archbishop of Dublin, St Laurence O’Toole in the 12th century.

Located on Marlborough Street, the Pro Cathedral site was bought in 1803 after the relaxation of the penal laws against Catholics in the late 18th century. The building was dedicated on the feast day of diocesan patron St Laurence O’Toole in 1825, several years before Catholic Emancipation in 1829, and was envisaged as a temporary arrangement, (hence the designation “Pro”) with plans to replace it with a dedicated cathedral at a later date. As part of the new designation, this will be dropped and the cathedral will be known simply as St Mary’s.