Roche MacGeoghegan

Who was Roche MacGeoghegan?

Roche MacGeoghegan, also known as Roque de la Cruz, was a seventeenth-century century Irish Dominican prelate and Tridentine reformist. A member of an aristocratic family from County Westmeath, he obtained a mostly Roman Catholic childhood education before, in his twenties, moving to Iberia and entering the Dominican Order. After many years promoting the revitalisation of the Order in Ireland, from Ireland and Continental Europe, he was considered unsuccessfully for the archbishopric of Armagh in 1625 and then successfully for the bishopric of Kildare in 1629. After a dozen years as bishop, his health slowly declined and he died in 1644.