Michael Cardinal Logue (1 October 1840 – 19 November 1924) was an Irish prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland from 1887 until his death in 1924. He was appointed a cardinal in 1893.
Early life and education
Cardinal Logue was born at his mother's paternal home, Duringings, in Kilmacrenan, a small town in the north of County Donegal in the north-west of Ulster, the northern province in Ireland. From 1857 to 1866, he studied at Maynooth College, where his intelligence earned him the nickname "the Northern Star." He was ordained as a priest in December of that year. He participated in the 1903, 1914, and 1922 conclaves that elected popes Pius X, Benedict XV, and Pius XI respectively. Logue took over the completion of the Victorian gothic St. Patrick's Cathedral in Armagh. The new cathedral, which towered over Armagh, was dedicated on 24 July 1904.
Cardinal Logue publicly supported the principle of Irish Home Rule throughout his long reign in both Raphoe and Armagh, though he was often wary of the motives of individual politicians articulating that political position. He maintained a loyal attitude to the British Crown during the First World War, and on 19 June 1917, when numbers of the younger clergy were beginning to take part in the Sinn Féin agitation, he issued an "instruction" calling attention to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church as to the obedience due to legitimate authority, warning the clergy against belonging to "dangerous associations," and reminding priests that it was strictly forbidden by the statutes of the National Synod to speak of political or kindred affairs in the church.
In 1918, however, he placed himself at the head of the opposition to the extension of the Military Service Act of 1916 to Ireland, in the midst of the Conscription Crisis of 1918. Bishops assessed that priests were permitted to denounce conscription on the grounds that the question was not political but moral. Logue also involved himself in politics for the 1918 general election, when he arranged an electoral pact between the Irish Parliamentary Party and Sinn Féin in three constituencies in Ulster, and chose a Sinn Féin candidate in South Fermanagh – the imprisoned Republican, John O'Mahoney.
He opposed the campaign of murder against the police and military begun in 1919, and in his Lenten pastoral of 1921, he vigorously denounced murder by whomsoever committed. This was accompanied by an almost equally vigorous attack on the methods and policy of the government. In earlier life he was a keen student of nature and an excellent yachtsman.