Church in the newly created Irish Free State, which was a dominion within the British Empire. He also exercised occasional additional roles by virtue of being a cardinal; he was, for example, the papal legate at the 1933 laying of the foundation stone of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, in the North of England, and the following year travelled to Australia as legate to the National Eucharistic Congress. He was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 1939 papal conclave, which selected Pope Pius XII. MacRory was a strenuous opponent of the Partition of Ireland. In late 1931, MacRory made the following statement:<blockquote>"The Protestant Church in Ireland – and the same is true of the Protestant Church anywhere – is not only not the rightful representative of the early Irish Church, but it is not even a part of the Church of Christ. That is my proposition."</blockquote> Wartime It was MacRory who suggested to Eoin O'Duffy that he raise an Irish Brigade to aid the Generalissimo Franco's Nationalists, who were seeking to overthrow the democratically elected Spanish government during that country's civil war. Many of the Brigade's members were blessed by the Archbishop of Tuam before sailing to Spain from Galway. In 1940, during World War II, he voiced strong objections to proposals for conscription in Northern Ireland, which, in the event, did not come to pass (see Conscription in the United Kingdom). Miscellanea MacRory was a supporter of the Gaelic League, and Errigal Ciaran, one of the most famous GAA clubs in Ireland, plays at Cardinal MacRory Park, Dunmoyle, which was named in his honour in 1956. The People's Primate Biographer J.J. Murphy published, in 1945, a 71-page biography of the prelate, The People's Primate. A Memoir of Joseph Cardinal MacRory, (Dublin, 1945). Death After a brief illness, Cardinal MacRory died at the age of 84 from a heart attack at Ara Coeli'', the residence in Armagh. He was interred in St Patrick's Cathedral Cemetery, Armagh. References External links Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church Reference to Cardinal MacRory in The_Rhetorical Spectre of Hunger Famine Fear and Food in Ireland during the World Wars (page 10), academia.edu; accessed 9 August 2017. 1861 births 1945 deaths 20th-century Roman Catholic archbishops in Ireland Irish anti-communists Irish cardinals Irish people of the Spanish Civil War Burials in Northern Ireland People from County Armagh People from County Tyrone Roman Catholic archbishops of Armagh