The archbishop and his unlikely fan at the FBI

Richard Fitzpatrick on two powerful men, operating on both sides of the Atlantic, who admired each other’s methods.

THE similarities between FBI boss J Edgar Hoover and Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, who was buried 40 years ago today, are striking. Both men were born in 1895 — the spymaster in Washington, the cleric in Cootehill, Co Cavan. They were power brokers who exercised considerable influence over their respective governments and societies.

Their lengthy reigns overlapped: Hoover assumed control of the Bureau of Investigation (as the FBI was then known) in 1924; McQuaid became Archbishop of Dublin a few years later, in 1940. Hoover never retired, dying in his post in 1971; McQuaid stepped down a year afterwards. Their chief personality traits were alike: great administrative gifts, but authoritarian and disturbingly prurient.