The Marian Year, 1954, which was called by Pope Pius XII to commemorate the centenary of the promulgation of the dogma of the Blessed Virgin Mary, witnessed a notable increase of Marian devotion across the Catholic world. This was the case in Ireland as in other countries, and the year was a watershed moment in Marian devotion in a period in which the Catholic Church’s influence over state and society in independent Ireland was itself at its height.