Maria Duce

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Maria Duce ("Mary, lead [us]") was a small right-wing Roman Catholic group in Ireland founded in 1942 by Fr Denis Fahey C.S.Sp. Its principal aim was to have the kingship of Jesus Christ over the island of Ireland recognised in law. In the group's view, this implied the withdrawal of legal recognition from--though not necessarily the prohibition of the practice of--all religions other than Roman Catholicism. Though Maria Duce's membership probably did not much exceed one hundred, its monthly journal Fiat enjoyed a fairly wide circulation in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The movement was not encouraged by the Irish hierarchy, whose members viewed its extremism with suspicion and desired not to become associated with Fr Fahey's writings and public statements. It was ordered to disband in 1955, a year after its founder's death, by the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid--himself a former pupil of Fahey's and a fellow member of the Holy Ghost Fathers.

It is perhaps the only monarchist or political movement in history to propose that a deceased person should be Head of State.

[edit] Bibliography

Enda Delaney, 'Political Catholicism in Post-War Ireland: The Revd. Denis Fahey and Maria Duce 1945- [sic] 54,' Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52:3 (July, 2001).

Sr. Mary Christine Athans, B.V.M., The Coughlin-Fahey Connection: Father Charles E. Coughlin, Father Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp., and Religious Anti-Semitism in the United States, 1938-1954 (New York: Peter Lang, 1991).