Bishop Daniel Mageean

Bishop Daniel Mageean D.D. 6 May 1882 - 17 January 1962 was an Irish Roman Catholic Prelate and until 1962 he held the title Lord Bishop of Down and Connor.

Daniel Mageean was born in the townland of Darragh Cross in the parish of Saintfield, Co. Down and received secondary education at St Malachy's College and St Patrick's College, Maynooth.

He was appointed to Glenavy Parish on 10 July 1907, and transferred to St Malachy's College on 1 September of the same year, where over the next 13 years Fr Mageean taught English Literature and Latin, and served as Dean of Discipline.

In 1919 Fr Mageean was transferred to St. Patrick's College, Maynooth as Junior Dean, rising to be Senior Dean before his episcopal nomination as 28th Bishop of Down and Connor in 1929.

In the 1930s he was a champion of Catholic rights especially after the anti-Catholic riots of 1935. In that year he succeeded in getting the anti-Catholic nature of much of Northern Ireland life raised in the House of Commons at Westminster but his efforts came to naught and he resigned himself to a long period of sterility as prime ecclesiastical leader of demoralised Northern Irish Catholics. In 1939 he coined the much-quoted phrase: A Protestant Parliament for a Protestant People, attributing it to his opponent the prime minister Lord Craigavon, but it was a slight misquotation.

He died on the 17 January 1962 and was succeeded by the Bishop of Clonfert, William Philbin.

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