The poorest country that one can know, according to a Vatican report from the mid-nineteenth century, was Ireland. It was to this country, beset with a variety of problems that Paul Cullen, having spent almost thirty years in Rome, returned in 1850. For twenty-eight years this ecclesiastic, who was destined to become Irelands first ever Cardinal, dominated Irish ecclesiastical and religious life. His influence in Church affairs was so great that his achievements have been described as the Cullenisation of Ireland. This book looks at two phases of Cullens secular activities. It traces his role and influence in two separate movements, one parliamentary the other revolutionary, both organised to improve the circumstances of Irish Catholics who were poor, wretched and dispirited on his arrival. The first of these campaigns was the Independent Irish Parliamentary Movement of the 1850s, the other, the revolutionary Fenian movement, prominent in the 1860s.
