Thomas Croke

Thomas William Croke ( born May 24, 1824 in Ballyclough, County Cork, Ireland, † July 22, 1902 in Thurles, County Tipperary, Ireland ) was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cashel and Emly in Ireland. The largest sports stadium in Ireland, Croke Park in Dublin, also headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association ( GAA), is named after him.

Croke was born in 1824 in Ballyclough, a small village near Mallow. He received his education in Charleville, County Cork and the Irish College in Paris. In 1846 he was ordained a priest. According to the Irish radicals William O'Brien Croke said to have fought during the revolution of 1848 in Paris on the barricades. He then returned to Ireland and in 1858 chairman of the St. Colman 's College in Fermoy. In 1865 he was parish priest of Doneraile. On the first Vatican Council of 1870 he took part as a theologian in the wake of the Bishop of Cloyne. In the same year he was appointed Bishop of Auckland in New Zealand. Croke was in 1875 a member of the Irish Church hierarchy when he took over the office of the Archbishop of Cashel and Emly, one of the four Irish archdioceses.

In political matters Croke was a supporter of Irish nationalism. He supported the Land League and the Chairman of the Irish Parliamentary Party, Charles Stewart Parnell. The break with Parnell came after his affair with Catherine O'Shea. Croke also joined the anti-alcohol movement of Father Matthew and the Gaelic League at its inception in 1893, to. Within the Catholic Church, he was a follower of the Gallican and stood in contrast to Ultramontanism of the Archbishop of Dublin, Cardinal Paul Cullen.

Due to his nationalist commitment, he was by the British government and their representatives in Dublin with more suspicion watched as the other less politically aligned, Irish bishops. After the scandal at Parnell's affair with Katharine O'Shea, the wife of his party colleague William O'Shea, Archbishop Croke withdrew from active participation in politics.

Croke died on July 22, 1902 at the age of 78 years in Thurles, County Tipperary.