Daniel Mannix, Catholic archbishop of Melbourne was a controversial figure during World War I.\u00a0Although he took little part in the first conscription debate in 1916, he was more active in 1917, when he addressed large crowds opposing conscription.<\/p>\n
Mannix was born in Ireland into a prosperous farming family of devout Catholics. He was well educated and an able scholar, qualifying for a doctorate in divinity in 1895. Also in 1895 he took up a lectureship and then a chair in moral theology at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, where he remained until appointed to the see of Melbourne in 1912. It has been suggested that Mannix’s indifference (some said hostility) to Irish nationalism precluded his appointment to a bishopric in Ireland.<\/p>\n
At his inauguration address in Melbourne on Easter Sunday 1913 Mannix said that he hoped to be a good Australian and to see Catholics ‘share in the good things in private and public life’. He began almost immediately to campaign for state aid\u00a0to Catholic schools.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t