Duggan, Patrick (1813–96), catholic bishop of Clonfert, was born 10 November 1813 at the house of his maternal grandparents at Tavanaghmore in the rural parish of Cummer, near Tuam, Co. Galway. He was the eldest of the four children of John Duggan, who farmed about 125 acres at Carrownageehe in the parish of Milltown, and his wife Penelope (née Canavan), of whose brothers Frank was a merchant at Tuam and Patrick, parish priest of Cummer. From his infancy Patrick Duggan lived at Patrick Canavan's house at Ballybanagher, where he was looked after by the housekeeper and by his maternal grandmother, the Canavans’ parents having taken up residence there after being evicted from their farm at Tavanaghmore. He attended school at Cummer chapel and privately at Tuam before entering St Jarlath's College, Tuam (1829). Intent on a clerical career he moved in 1833 to Maynooth, where, after gaining some academic distinctions, he was ordained priest (5 June 1841). Duggan's entire pastoral career before becoming a bishop took place in his native parish: he was curate to his uncle at Belclare and Cummer until the latter became mentally incapacitated (1847), administrator until his uncle's death (1856), and then parish priest. An early achievement was the building of a new, Gothic-style chapel at Cummer (1842–4). Disliking the national school system, he introduced Franciscan brothers to Cummer to open a catholic boys’ school (1854).
Duggan had the reputation of being a nationalist (his brother John in America allegedly became a Fenian). According to his biographer, Thomas Brett, he assisted John Blake Dillon (qv) in his escape from the law after the fiasco of the Young Ireland rebellion (August 1848); however, by Dillon's own account, he refused absolutely to admit Dillon to his house at Cummer, saying that he would not expose himself to the danger of harbouring a fugitive, despite the pleas and assurances of another priest, Anthony O'Regan, president of St Jarlath's and a future bishop of Chicago, who was acting as Dillon's guide. During the famine, Duggan exerted himself on behalf of his starving parishioners, not only tending to their physical and pastoral needs but writing letters to the press seeking aid. Later his own father was evicted from his house at Carrownageehe. The population of the parish fell from 7,360 to 5,330 between 1841 and 1851, and fell again in the next two decades, to 4,839 (1861) and then to 4,427 (1871). It is said that Patrick Duggan was ‘the curate in the county Galway during the Famine’ who suggested to John O'Rourke (qv) that he write his History of the great Irish famine (1875) and who supplied him with some of his information.
Thanks to his friendship with John MacEvilly (qv), a fellow student at Maynooth, who became bishop of Galway in 1856 and was much respected at Rome after the meeting of the first Vatican council (1869–70), Duggan was nominated bishop of the adjacent diocese of Clonfert (10 September 1871). Paul Cullen (qv), archbishop of Dublin and papal legate in Ireland, was satisfied at the appointment, as Duggan had been recommended to him by his vicar general, Edward McCabe (qv), another of Duggan's friends from his time at Maynooth, and had been opposed by John MacHale (qv), archbishop of Tuam, Cullen's arch-enemy. Shortly after his consecration (14 January 1872) Duggan threw himself into the campaign of one of the candidates in the Co. Galway by-election, a catholic landowner, home-ruler, and advocate of tenant right, Captain John Philip Nolan (qv), a native of Cummer, whose family had long been friendly with Duggan's. A year earlier he had persuaded Nolan to come to an amicable agreement with some tenants evicted from his estate at Portacarron in west Galway. Nolan was returned with a large majority over his tory rival, William Le Poer Trench (qv), but Trench petitioned successfully for his unseating on grounds of undue influence by Duggan and other clerics. The judge who tried the petition, William Keogh (qv), fiercely denounced Duggan, which enhanced the bishop's reputation among many home-rulers. In consequence of Keogh's judgment Duggan and twenty-three other priests were prosecuted. He was defended in court by Isaac Butt (qv), the leader of the home rule MPs, and acquitted (19 February 1873). However, chastened by this experience, he later proved unwilling to support Butt's political activities publicly.
Duggan's attempts to build a cathedral at Loughrea (the seat of the Clonfert diocese) were thwarted by Hubert George de Burgh-Canning (qv), 2nd marquess of Clanricarde, who, reclusive and stubborn, became in 1874 the owner of over 50,000 acres covering much of east Galway; Duggan became his implacable enemy. He did, however, succeed in reviving the diocesan seminary, St Brendan's, at Loughrea and in founding a classical school, St Michael's, at Ballinasloe. When agrarian unrest in Connacht in the late 1870s gave rise to the Land League, Duggan ‘entered wholeheartedly into the spirit and aim of the agitation’ (Davitt, 158). Having called repeatedly for both relief of distress among tenant farmers and for reductions in their rents, he appeared as a witness before the Richmond commission on Irish agricultural distress (15 June 1880). Although in 1884 Duggan's health began to fail and a co-adjutor was appointed, he continued unflagging in his support for tenant farmers in Co. Galway. For many years there had been unrest among the tenants on the Woodford estate of Lord Clanricarde (near Loughrea). When some were evicted for non-payment of rent (August 1886), the Plan of Campaign was adopted and the place became a centre of attraction for leading agitators, among them William O'Brien (qv). While O'Brien was on trial at Loughrea (April 1888) for having attended a banned meeting, Duggan had him and his defending barrister, Timothy Michael Healy (qv), stay with him at the bishop's house. It was while they were at table on 27 April that Duggan memorably received his copy of the papal rescript condemning the Plan of Campaign and treated it contemptuously with the remark, ‘Mike, kill another pig!’ (O'Brien, 350).
For many years Duggan published articles in a variety of journals. In the 1850s he wrote for The Tablet, whose editor, Frederick Lucas (qv), visited him in Co. Galway. For over thirty years he contributed occasional articles to the Freeman's Journal, whose owner, Sir John Gray (qv), he knew well. He wrote weekly leading articles for the Tuam Herald, owned by Richard John Kelly (qv) (1810–84) and his son Jasper (d. 1873); he was also said by Jasper's son Richard Jasper Kelly (qv) (1860–1931) to have been the Irish correspondent of the French ultramontane catholic newspaper L'Univers.
Although Duggan spoke Irish well, he was, according to Healy, unsympathetic to its revival, regarding it as a cause of the misfortunes of the Irish people. A practical man, he was popularly credited with the extension of the Midland and Great Western Railway from Attymon to Loughrea. He was a teetotaller. Duggan died 15 August 1896 in Dublin and was buried at Glasnevin beside McCabe. Healy remembered him as ‘simple, earnest, off-hand, genial and good-natured’, but ‘intensely bitter about the Famine’ (Brett, 111). But so narrow was his experience and outlook that the high regard in which he was held was confined largely to his native county.