Paschal Robinson, Order of Friars Minor was an Irish ecclesiastical diplomat.
Background
Born David Robinson in Ireland on 26 April 1870 and raised in the United States, Robinson was the son of a journalist and began his career as a teenager in that same field Although he briefly considered a career in law, he had served as both London correspondent for The New York Sun and as associate editor of the North American Review before he decided to pursue the Catholic priesthood as a Franciscan.
Education
Robinson studied at the College of the Holy Cross (1895) and the Franciscan Saint Bonaventure University (1896), becoming a Franciscan in August 1896, and being sent by the Franciscans to study in Rome under his new name, Paschal.
Career
A journalist and renowned medievalist before he entered diplomatic service, he was the titular archbishop of Tyana and the first apostolic nuncio to Ireland since the 17th-century Archbishop Rinuccini. Influential in his position, he served as nuncio from January 1930 until his death in 1948. He became a priest at Saint Anthony"s International College in Rome on 21 December 1901.
In 1902, he received the Degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology and began to teach.
He worked in and studied at various universities around the world and undertook a research project in Jerusalem. He also published; his first book, The Real Saint Francis, was released in 1903, with Some Pages of Franciscan History (1905), The Writings of Saint Francis (1906) and The Life of Saint Clare (1910) following over the next seven years.
He was associate editor of the Archivum Franciscanum Historicum and contributed to the Catholic Encyclopedia. By 1914, the year he was inducted into the Royal Historical Society, he was known as "one of the foremost living historians of the Middle Ages", a specialty he cultivated while at Oxford University.
In 1913, he was appointed Professor of Medieval History at The Catholic University of America in Washington District of Columbia by the Pope, a position he held from 1913 to 1919, when the Holy See took him into a diplomatic service in Rome.
He served as the titular archbishop of Tyana from May 1927 before, in December 1929, the pope appointed him the first apostolic nuncio to Ireland since the 17th-century Archbishop Giovanni Battista Rinuccini. In 1930, he began his service as nuncio, arriving in January to a three-day celebration. In 1934, a photographer captured the German Envoy to Ireland, Georg von Dehn, kissing Robinson"s episcopal ring.
Von Dehn was immediately recalled and removed from diplomatic service by Adolf Hitler for unbecoming conduct, and the photograph – and word of its repercussions – spread internationally.
Robinson exerted tremendous influence in Ireland during his term and is credited in The Irish Times as having helped secure good relations between Ireland the Holy Secretary He remained in office until his death on 27 August 1948, at the Apostolic Nunciature in Dublin.
In keeping with his wishes, he was buried in the section reserved for the Friars Minor in Glasnevin Cemetery.