Please join the Keough-Naughton Institute, the Global Catholic Reseach Initiative, and the Department of History as we celebrate the publication of the Professor Colin Barr's new book, The Irish Pope: Paul Cullen, 1803-1878 (Cambridge University Press, 2026). Barr will be joined in conversation with Professor Emeritus Thomas Bartlett, professor emeritus of Irish history at the University of Aberdeen. Copies of the book will be available for purchase after the event.
About The Irish Pope
Paul Cullen was without question the most important Irishman of his generation and a figure of global importance. He is also among the least understood. Examining every aspect of Cullen's life and career, Colin Barr explores how Cullen was characterised by his contemporaries as an 'Italian monk', 'the deadly foe of Irish liberty', 'an obscurantist run mad', or 'the most malignant enemy of the English & English Government in Ireland.' One frustrated contemporary called him 'the Pope of Ireland'. This study explores Cullen's early years and education in papal Rome, his career in the curia and then in Ireland, as Archbishop of Dublin, the first Irish cardinal, and author of the compromise text that defined the dogma of papal infallibility. Drawing on more than 100 archives in ten countries, The Irish Pope examines Cullen's life and work at home and abroad, and through it the history of Ireland in the mid-Victorian era.
About Professor Colin Barr
Colin Barr is the Thomas Moore and Judy Livingston Director of the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies and professor of modern Irish history in the Keough School of Global Affairs. Barr’s work seeks to place the history of the island of Ireland and its peoples in the widest possible context, including that of the United Kingdom, the continent of Europe, the Roman Catholic Church, and the global Irish Diaspora. He is the author or editor of a number of books, including Ireland’s Empire: The Roman Catholic Church in the English-speaking World, 1829-1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), The European Culture Wars in Ireland: The Callan Schools Affair, 1868-1881 (University College Dublin Press, 2010), Paul Cullen, John Henry Newman, and the Catholic University of Ireland, 1845-65 (University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), Nation/Nazione: Irish Nationalism and the Italian Risorgimento (co-edited with Michele Finelli and Anne O’Connor; University College Dublin Press, 2014), and Religion and Greater Ireland: Christianity and Irish Global Networks, 1750-1950 (co-edited with Hilary M. Carey; McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015).