A multi-million euro renovation project that will close St Mary’s Cathedral in Dublin for two years has been strongly criticised by a well-known priest as “a vanity project”.
Fr Brendan Hoban, of Killala diocese in the west of Ireland, said: “The optics are all wrong.”
The upgrade to one of Dublin’s most historically significant places of worship will involve a reconfiguration and restoration of the sanctuary and internal spaces, including the provision of a new glazed entrance lobby, restoration of decorative mosaic flooring and a new retractable platform lift for accessibility.
It will also involve the construction of a new sacred heart chapel area, the demolition of outdated extensions, and the provision of new rooms on the upper levels to support the Palestrina choir, staff and clergy.
The Marlborough Street church was known as St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral until Pope Leo elevated it to cathedral status to mark its bicentenary in November 2025.
One of Fr Hoban’s concerns is how the money will be raised.
The cost of the conservation, refurbishment and repair works is speculated to be about €25m.
A spokesman for the archdiocese of Dublin said that, because the tender process was still under way, “costs and the length of time required for the works are not yet known”.
Dublin City Council granted planning permission for the works last year. St Mary’s is a protected structure within the O’Connell Street Architectural Conservation Area.
Dublin diocese spokesman Peter Henry referred to Archbishop Dermot Farrell’s homily for the feast of St Kevin in 2024, in which he said: “I have received many indications of support for this strong expression of our faith and hope. Accordingly, I am confident that substantial financial support will be forthcoming that will enable necessary structural work to be carried out without adversely affecting other important pastoral needs.”
The archbishop’s homily on the feast of St Laurence O’Toole last November also addressed the role of the cathedral in the archdiocese of Dublin.
He said the designation of a cathedral would be an important sign that there was nothing “fleeting” about the commitment of the Church in Dublin and nothing “incomplete about its structures”.
Dr Farrell described St Mary’s Cathedral as an important element of the built heritage of Dublin.
Fr Hoban has challenged the proposed spend, asking whether Catholic resources could produce such a large sum and whether that would be the best way to spend it: “Could spending €25m on a new cathedral be not just a waste of money, but a waste of resources?”
For Dr Farrell, as well as being a place of prayer, a new cathedral must be a place of beauty: “If our places of assembly and worship do not reflect the beauty of Christ, our faith remains, in the words of Cardinal Mendonca, ‘dry, functional, bureaucratic, ritualistic, an outward bath of conventions to which our hearts remain impervious’.”
Fr Hoban has raised another concern: a lack of consultation. He told the Irish Independent that the process “presses all the wrong buttons on commitments to synodality and the poor”.
A synodal church, he said, was a church of the people, where all the baptised were listened to and given a say.
The project could have found expression, he added, in “a decision that reflected the will of the people of Dublin though an open consultation, instead of the present decision that seems to reflect the private wishes of the clerical church”.
Fr Hoban said the way the project had been handled was “yet another example of how the clerical church is effectively pushing back against the imperative of reform. Dublin diocese can and should do better than this”.
Last August, the Sunday Independent revealed the project had an initial budget of about €20m.
Emails obtained under Freedom of Information showed church officials had briefed Dublin City Council earlier in the year on its plans to “re-energise” the building.
Brendan Merry & Partners, the quantity surveyor for the refurbishment, said the “transformative project” would enhance the protected structure to bring it up to full cathedral status, preserving its architectural heritage and strengthening the cathedral’s role as a spiritual and community hub in the heart of the city.
It is understood St Mary’s will close its doors around June. St Andrew’s Church on Westland Row will be used by Dublin diocese while the cathedral is closed.