Victor Griffin, who has died, aged 92 was Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin for 22 years. He pushed the boundaries both as dean and as a Church of Ireland churchman. His involvement in the public life of his time evokes one of the roles of his most famous predecessor, Jonathan Swift.
"For two decades, he [Victor Griffin] was one of the best-known churchmen in Ireland and one of St Patrick's most famous deans," according to Albert Fenton's book Decani, on the deans of St Patrick's. In The Irish Times in December 2013, Patsy McGarry wrote that many saw him as "the great dean of the 20th century".
He was born and reared on a farm in Carnew, Co Wicklow, the son of Gilbert Griffin and Violet Crowe. He recalled that when he was growing up, his mother used to say: “Keep off religion and politics, Victor, or you’ll get us all burned out.” This was the Ireland of the 1920s and 1930s where Protestants who feared being associated with the ascendancy or unionism “had to keep quiet”.
He boarded at Kilkenny College and Mountjoy School, Dublin, before entering Trinity College in 1945, where he won prizes for philosophy and metaphysical studies as an undergraduate. He was ordained in St Columb’s Cathedral, Derry, in 1947 and his first parish was St Augustine’s in the city, where he served until 1951. He was curate of Christ Church, Derry, until 1957, when he became rector. A lecturer in philosophy at Magee College, Derry, from 1950 to 1968, he was also rural dean of Derry 1960-1968.
In 1958, he married Daphne Mitchell, a teacher from Limavady, Co Derry. His 1993 autobiography, Mark of Protest, was dedicated to her and in it he recalled meeting her for the first time. "Any young man would have cast his eyes hungrily in her direction, and I was instantly ensnared." They had twin sons, Kevin and Timothy.
In Northern Ireland, he joined John Hume and others fighting for a more tolerant and pluralist society. For this, some on his own side called him a “Lundy” and told him to take himself back to his “Fenian brethren in the south”.
He was elected Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in November 1968 and served until 1991, bringing great energy and vigour to the role. One of his earliest involvements was with the anti-apartheid movement – he was part of the protest outside Lansdowne Road in 1970 when Ireland played the visiting Springboks team. His acceptance of an invitation from the GAA in 1977 meant he became the first dean of St Patrick’s to attend an All-Ireland football final (Armagh v Dublin).
In the late 1970s, he joined the protests against Dublin Corporation building its civic offices on the important Viking archaeological site at Wood Quay. He was named one of the people of the year in 1979 for “an outstanding contribution to society in Ireland”.
The second decade of his deanery witnessed no abatement in his campaigning zeal. He took a leading role against the controversial abortion amendment being added to the Constitution in 1983, which caused Oliver J Flanagan to remark in the Dáil that “the North of Ireland has one Paisley and that is enough, without another coming down to the South”. He supported the 1986 divorce referendum, which was defeated. His basic position was that the Constitution was not the vehicle for dealing with morally controversial subjects which, he felt, should be left to the legislature.
That same year, in response to Dublin Corporation's proposal to have street widening, large office blocks and car parks in the Liberties area near St Patrick's Cathedral, he and Irish Times journalist Frank McDonald and others organised the Dublin Crisis Conference, which produced a report on the problems in the city and what could be done to solve them.
He was also part of the Peace Train movement (1989-1994), set up by Belfast writer and broadcaster Sam McAughtry and the Rev Chris Hudson, to protest at IRA bombing of the Dublin-Belfast rail line. “Through his stand on these and other issues, Griffin became in many ways the voice of the Church of Ireland for two decades,” Albert Fenton has written.
Victor Griffin published a number of works on Anglican theology, including Anglican and Irish (1976), Pluralism and Ecumenism (1983), Mark of Protest: an Autobiography (1993), Swift and His Hospital (1995), Swift: Reason, Religion and Madness (1996) and Enough Religion to Make Us Hate: Reflections on Religion and Politics (2009). He also inaugurated the annual Jonathan Swift Lecture, which is now a weekend symposium.
Following his retirement in 1991, he and his wife moved to Limavady. She died in 1998 and his son Timothy died suddenly in 2012. He is survived by their son Kevin, daughters-in-law Janice and Betty, and grandchildren Hazel, Sonya, Alison, Stephen and Leon.