Dr Connell was a surprise for the post, writes Patsy McGarry Religious Affairs Correspondent.
You could say he became Archbishop of Dublin almost by default. His name was among the last to surface publicly during the extraordinary nine months which elapsed between the death in April 1997 of his predecessor, Archbishop Kevin McNamara, and the announcement of his appointment in January 1988.
It was extraordinary because of the tactics employed over that period, which saw almost everyone's favourite for the job, Bishop Donal Murray, successfully done down. He was the man most favoured for the post by the bishops and Dublin's priests.
Now Bishop of Limerick and then an auxiliary bishop of Dublin, Bishop Murray was blocked by the then papal nuncio, Dr Gaetano Alibrandi, who wanted to transfer Archbishop Dermot Clifford from Cashel to Dublin.
That was vigorously opposed by Dublin's priests (and many of the bishops) who didn't want an outsider in Dublin. And Dr Clifford was not popular with his own priests in Cashel.
When word emerged that Bishop Murray was favourite to succeed, anxious conservative elements in Dublin informed Rome that the auxiliary bishop accepted "unorthodox practices" in his part of the archdiocese.This was a reference to his allowing altar girls in Bray, still uncommon then, and the conduct of absolution services there.
An item on the matter was broadcast on RTÉ. It did the trick. Bishop Murray was ruled out of the race by Rome, to the great anger of priests in Dublin.
Hotly tipped to get the post then was the president of St Patrick's College, Maynooth, Mgr Michael Ledwith. He was seen as "an excellent compromise", to quote one well-placed source at the time. His theological credentials were impeccable and he had been secretary to the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops at Rome in 1985. That was seen as a clear indication of the esteem in which he was held at the Vatican.
But he was only 42 and had already been passed over, in 1984, when the vacancy in his native Ferns diocese was filled by Bishop Brendan Comiskey.
Another name mentioned for Dublin at the time was Father Enda McDonagh, then a professor at Maynooth. But he was seen as too liberal by Dr Alibrandi, who had previously ensured Father McDonagh was passed over for the post of archbishop in his native Tuam diocese, though he was the man most favoured by priests there.
It was autumn 1987 before the then Mgr Connell's name emerged as a contender for Dublin. Comparatively unknown, he was 62 and dean of the faculty of philosophy and sociology at UCD. He had been a close friend of both previous Archbishops of Dublin, Dr McNamara and Dr Dermot Ryan, and had ministered to the dying Dr McNamara. By December 1987, word was emanating from Rome that he was to get the post. On January 21st, 1988, it was announced he was archbishop-designate.
In reports at the time, one unnamed parish priest thought the news "dreadful". He said Dr Connell's theology was "an extreme right-wing kind learned before Vatican II". Another thought it "unbelievable". Dr Connell, he said "had not a clue about life at the coal-face and lived in a world of Kant and the older philosophers".
For his part, Dr Connell met the criticisms with good humour. But no one anticipated what lay ahead or such abject moments as awaited him. As indicated when he reacted to criticisms of his handling of clerical child sex abuse cases with "I am as human as any of you . . . it is the issue which has devastated my period of office" in Maynooth on April 8th, 2002.
Up to his appointment as Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Connell had served just six months in pastoral ministry and that was as a chaplain to the Mater Hospital between his ordination in 1951 and his going for further study to the University in Louvain. He secured a doctorate in philosophy there and joined the philosophy department at UCD in 1953. He was in UCD 35 years when his appointment to Dublin was announced. He was a particularly conservative metaphysician. His doctorate was on the 17th century French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche and dealt with the nature of the unknown intelligence of angels. He was an authority on the medieval philosophers, particularly Thomas Aquinas, but denied any hostility to modern thinking while of the view that since the time of Descartes philosophy saw man as the measure of all things. In his belief, reality was complete only in the perception of the divine, while man's perception was partial.
Essentially a private man, he can be charming, kind, gentle, humorous and ran his university department without acrimony. Former students speak of him with affection, while having mixed views about his beliefs. One described him as "a quiet, long-suffering man" who was "trying to live a theology of obedience, poverty, and chastity in a time of frantic change".
He was born in Phibsboro, Dublin, on March 24th, 1926. His father John was the son of an RIC sergeant from Moycullen, Co Galway, while his mother Maise was from Dublin. She was working in the GPO when the Rising began in 1916, and was shepherded to safety by The O'Rahilly.
John Connell was a civil servant in the Department of Industry and Commerce, where he became a close friend of the minister, Seán Lemass, who appointed him managing director of Bord Siúcre Éireann.
Connell snr ran a religious household. He died in 1939 from an infected ulcer, and the family of three boys moved with their mother to Ballymun Road. There was no civil-service pension then. "It was tough, very tough," Dr Connell has said, "but it coincided with the war, when everybody was suffering hard times." He attended Belvedere College before going to Clonliffe, where he studied for the priesthood.
His first years as archbishop of Dublin were unremarkable, at least in terms of public controversy. He preoccupied himself with addressing the major financial problems then facing the archdiocese, which he and finance administrator Mgr John Wilson, soon brought under control. He also began to speak out on social issues, particularly on unemployment, Travellers, and the disadvantaged generally.
This was unexpected but became a consistent theme during his term in office. Indeed, he was among the first senior national figures to express concerns about how refugees and asylum-seekers were being treated in Ireland.
Less surprising were his unequivocally orthodox stances on divorce, abortion, homosexuality, women priests, and reproductive technology. In instances where his brother bishops maintained more discreet, though similar, positions on such subjects, he sometimes waded in.
Then there was his use of language. In 1995, referring to the case of Father Ivan Payne, he said the archdiocese had never paid compensation to victims of abuse by its priests. This was after it emerged that Payne had paid compensation of almost £30,000 to Mr Andrew Madden, who had been abused by him. In 1998 it emerged that Payne borrowed the money from the archdiocese. Dr Connell said it was a loan, not compensation. It was a semantic refinement too far for some.
His reaction to the President, Mrs McAleese, taking communion in Dublin's Christ Church Cathedral in December 1997 and his description of a Catholic doing so as a "sham" brought the house down around his ears. His advice, then too, that the former Bishop of Galway Dr Eamon Casey, returning from five years "exile" on the missions in Ecuador should get lost as other retired bishops had done, was seen by many as unacceptably harsh.
His 1999 statement that children whose parents planned their births through reproductive technology were less loved was greeted with incredulity. However, his stance on these and other issues helped forge closer ties with Rome, where he has been a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 1993. Such, it is said, led to his being given the red hat in 2001.
But the wincing of his flock at home did not end then. His almost triumphalist address about how much Ireland owed to the Catholic Church at the Irish College in Rome on the day of his elevation to the College of Cardinals in February 2001 had unnerving echoes. Ireland would not be Ireland without the Catholic Church, he declared.
At the State reception in his honour in May that year, hosted by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and his then partner Ms Celia Larkin, he spoke of the primacy of the family as an institution. So doing, it seemed, he could attend the reception while not allowing it be interpreted as an endorsement of the Taoiseach and Ms Larkin's personal arrangements.
And there was his interview in the book The Irish Soul: In Dialogue, published in October 2001. His then Church of Ireland counterpart, Archbishop Walton Empey, was not one of that Church's "high flyers" he said, and "wouldn't have much theological competence". He expressed annoyance that Trinity College did not award him an honorary degree in 1988, the year of the Dublin millennium. Both suggested an intellectual hubris that brought ridicule on his head and an outpouring of affection for Archbishop Empey. But, without doubt, 2002 was his annus horribilis, par excellence. It was the year when his handling of clerical child sex abuse cases was exposed most mercilessly. In April it emerged that he had not told gardaí that Father Paul McGennis, who abused Ms Marie Collins in 1960, had admitted the crime. In October 2002 Prime Time's Cardinal Errors programme gave a damning account of his handling of cases involving eight priests of the diocese who had been involved in child sex abuse.
Garda and Government investigations were announced.
Post-October 2002, he seemed to finally admit his own personal responsibility for much that had gone wrong in the archdiocese where the handling of clerical child sex abuse during his term was concerned. His meeting with abuse victims Ms Collins and Mr Ken Reilly on December 30th of that year was a genuine coming together of minds with a common purpose.
This threatened to fall asunder in February 2003 when it emerged the archdiocese had no structure for the support of victims, as per the 1996 guidelines issued by the Irish bishops.
It reflected his "only guidelines" remark to Ms Collins about those church directions, at a meeting with Ms Collins in December 1996. But in March 2003 he issued a strong statement that such a structure was being put in place with direct input from Ms Collins and Mr Reilly. And that has been done.