Crolly, George (1813–78), catholic priest and theologian, was born 11 February 1813 in the townland of Ballyrolly, in the parish of Downpatrick, Co. Down. A son of John Crolly, who farmed at Ballyrolly, and a nephew of William Crolly (qv), a future catholic archbishop of Armagh (1835–49), he entered St Patrick's College, Maynooth, on 25 August 1829, became a student at the Dunboyne establishment (1835), and was ordained priest in March 1837. For the next seven years he ministered in Belfast, during which time he also contributed to The Vindicator, the catholic newspaper started there (1839) by Charles Gavan Duffy (qv). On 20 January 1844 he was appointed professor of theology at Maynooth, a position he held until his death. In the late 1840s he was one of those priests who, like Archbishop Crolly, supported the Charitable Bequests and Queen's Colleges bills, thus opposing Daniel O'Connell (qv) as well as other bishops.
In 1853 Crolly gave evidence to the royal commission of inquiry into the affairs of Maynooth College. It was interpreted by Paul Cullen (qv), papal legate in Ireland as well as archbishop of Dublin – a powerful man who feared the subservience of the college to the civil authorities in consequence of its parliamentary grant being made permanent in 1845 – as support for Gallicanism, a tendency to depreciate the centralising authority of the pope. Cullen castigated Crolly in letters to Rome, and on a visit there in 1854–5 he submitted to Propaganda two documents denouncing Crolly. The outcome was that Crolly was censured; he retracted and agreed to go to Rome. Although he was there with his bishop, Cornelius Denvir (qv), he was refused a DD (1857), a refusal twice repeated (1860, 1877). If Crolly seemed to hold Gallican views it was because he resented the damage caused to his uncle's reputation from his support for the Queen's Colleges, which after much controversy were condemned by the pope.
As a theologian George Crolly linked catholic moral theology to British and Irish civil law with his Disputationes theologicae de justitia et jure ad normam juris municipalis Britannici et Hibernici conformatae (3 vols, 1870–77). He was also the author of The life and death of Oliver Plunkett (1850) and The life of the Most Rev. Doctor Crolly (1851). He died 24 January 1878 at Rathgar, Dublin, and was buried at the Maynooth College cemetery.