Former Bishop of Down and Connor Patrick Walsh dies aged 92

His passing was announced by St Peter’s Cathedral Parish in Belfast.

The church asked for prayers for the “happy repose of the soul of Bishop Patrick Walsh” who “passed away peacefully” on Thursday evening in Nazareth House Care Village in Belfast.

Bishop Donal McKeown, Apostolic Administrator of Down and Connor, said: “It is with great sadness that I learned of the death of Bishop Patrick Walsh yesterday evening in Nazareth Care Village, Belfast, where he had resided in his later years of retirement.”

He recalled “a gifted academic” who was “utterly dedicated and faithful in his service of the church”.

A former president of Belfast’s St Malachy’s College and maths teacher, Patrick Walsh became a bishop in 1983.

Born in Cobh, in Co Cork in 1931, Bishop Walsh’s family moved to Belfast when he was 11. He would go on to attend St Mary’s Christian Brothers’ Grammar School in west Belfast.

In 2005, Bishop Walsh called for the Catholic Church to put in place measures to protect the welfare of children following a response which detailed the abuse by 21 priests in Wexford, which he told the BBC was “shameful reading.”

In 2019, television presenter Eamonn Holmes recalled receiving a detention from Bishop Walsh while he was a pupil at St Malachy’s after a bus hijacking during the Troubles made him late for school.

Bishop Walsh would later call the future GB News presenter “the most tenacious and argumentative young man” he had ever come across and but said he would “go far in his profession” as a journalist.

In 2011, Bishop Walsh was one of the first to greet King Charles when the then Prince of Wales visited St Malachy’s Church in the Markets to view the results of a major £3.5m restoration project.

During the visit the future monarch chaired a discussion to consider the role of redundant and distressed churches and church estates in the heritage-led regeneration of communities in what then First Minister Peter Robinson called “a new era” for Belfast.

He stepped down from his role as Bishop of Down and Connor in 2008.

Saint Peter’s Cathedral Parish Belfast continued in their post that Bishop Walsh’s funeral details would be “made in due course.”

"May he rest in peace,” they added.