What was your thoughts on that mindset that he had?

Well, I suppose it's very hard to say, you know, from the time period, you know, his opinions of it.

I suppose he probably viewed that he had to do the job, you know, as I said, his role as president was to, you know, train priests for the missions.

And as he saw it at the time, and I think he felt let down by the hierarchy in Ireland didn't support him.

the case was taken by Father Hickey to the Roman Rota and the Roman Rota eventually ruled in Mannix's favour but it did a lot of damage to his, I suppose, his Episcopal career.

A lot of the cases, what was common at that time was they would serve a period abroad, you know, on a vacancy and then when a position became vacant in Ireland they would return maybe to Dublin or, you know, to Clyne or these places but I think it did an awful lot of damage to him and he never returned to Ireland after his last visit in 1925.

His last act as president of Maynooth before he left for Australia was to appoint de Valera as temporary mathematics lecturer there.

But to actually stick with your guns and continue that, I mean, it goes to show what type of person he was.