Educated at the Marist Brothers' College in the Sydney suburb of Kogarah, he left school when 13 years old, to work as a messenger boy in what was then the Postmaster-General's Department.

He expressed an interest in becoming a priest and began his studies at St Columba's, Springwood in 1917, and continued them from 1919 at the Urban College in Rome.

[1] In December 1934, he was appointed Bishop of Port Augusta, South Australia, gaining an experience in dealing with pastoral problems that was to serve him well in his later position.

As Archbishop Gilroy enforced strict discipline in accordance with the Code of Canon Law on his clergy, who had grown lax under the elderly Kelly.

He was unable to bring to concrete realisation his plan to establish a Catholic university but was to some extent successful in his project to found a faculty of theology at Manly.

[1] The 1954 split of the Australian Labor Party saw a marked difference of opinion between Gilroy and Archbishop Daniel Mannix of Melbourne, who backed B.

As a result of the close relationship between Gilroy and Cahill, there was no split in the New South Wales Labor Party, as there had been in Victoria and Queensland.

[5] The author, John Luttrell FMS has been praised for his "fresh research...and a genuine portrait of the man who rose from postal clerk to prince of the Church.