Thomas Croke - Bishop of Auckland

Bishop of Auckland

Croke gained the good opinion of the Irish ecclesiastical authorities and was rewarded in 1870 by his promotion to Bishop of Auckland in New Zealand. His former professor, Paul Cullen, by then Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin, was largely responsible for filling the Australasian Catholic church with fellow Irishmen. His strong recommendations led to Croke's appointment. Croke arrived at Auckland on 17 December 1870 on the City of Melbourne. During his three years as bishop he restored firm leadership to a diocese left in disarray by his predecessor, Bishop J. B. F. Pompallier. Croke devoted some of his considerable personal wealth to rebuilding diocesan finances and also took advantage of Auckland's economic growth following the development of the Thames goldfields to further his aims, ensuring that all surplus income from parishes at Thames and Coromandel was passed on to him, and he instituted a more rigorous system for the Sunday collection at St Patrick's Cathedral. He appointed Walter McDonald administrator of the Cathedral. Croke imported Irish clergy to serve the growing Catholic community, and with Patrick Moran, the first Catholic Bishop of Dunedin, he tried (unsuccessfully) to secure an Irish monopoly on future episcopal appointments in New Zealand. He was intolerant of non-Irish Catholic traditions, represented in New Zealand by the Marists and Benedictines. Under him the energies of Auckland Catholicism were devoted to saving the souls of the Irish immigrant rather than to converting the Māori. Croke supported separate Catholic schools and their right to state aid, and voiced his opposition to secular education as Auckland's Catholic schools were threatened by the provincial council's Education Act 1872, which helped to create a free, secular and compulsory education system. However, generally, Croke's image was uncontroversial. There was also little sign of the strongly Irish nationalist line he would adopt during his subsequent career in Ireland. On 28 January 1874, after barely three years in office, Croke departed for Europe, on what was ostensibly a 12-month holiday and he did not return to New Zealand.