of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, Philippines. Gilroy was knighted in 1969. He was the first Roman Catholic cardinal to receive a knighthood since the English Reformation. He was named Australian of the Year in 1970. He resigned as Archbishop of Sydney in July 1971 and died in Sydney in 1977, aged 81. He was succeeded by James Darcy Freeman. As Archbishop Gilroy enforced strict discipline in accordance with the Code of Canon Law on his clergy, who had grown lax under the elderly Kelly. In so doing, he acquired a reputation of an "iron man". He always maintained his exacting standards but showed compassion for those who failed to meet them. Much of his energy was devoted to providing churches and schools for his flock. By 1971, he had 366 schools with 115,704 pupils, staffed by 751 religious brothers and 2,992 nuns as well as lay teachers. He was unable to bring to concrete realisation his plan to establish a Catholic university but was to some extent successful in his project to found a faculty of theology at . The 1954 split of the Australian Labor Party saw a marked difference of opinion between Gilroy and Archbishop Daniel Mannix of Melbourne, who backed B. A. Santamaria's "Movement" (the episcopally sponsored Catholic Social Studies Movement). Gilroy avoided direct political comment and believed that the Church should not become involved in politics. However, like most other Sydney Irish Roman Catholics, he had grown up as a supporter of the Australian Labor Party. Moreover, he was a confidant of Roman Catholic Labor Premier of New South Wales Joseph Cahill. He firmly opposed Santamaria's activities and banned the distribution of his movement's literature in Sydney churches. As a result of the close relationship between Gilroy and Cahill, there was no split in the New South Wales Labor Party, as there had been in Victoria and Queensland. In 2017 the first extended biography of Gilroy was published to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Cardinal's death. The author, John Luttrell FMS has been praised for his "fresh research...and a genuine portrait of the man who rose from postal clerk to prince of the Church." Legacy Gilroy College, a Year 7–12 high school in north-western Sydney named after him opened in 1980. The college took Gilroy's personal motto, "Christ is my light", as the official school motto. Gilroy College celebrated its 25th anniversary as