Fr Martin Clarke (66), the former spokesman for the Catholic bishops, has died in Dublin following a long illness.
From Booterstown, Co Dublin, Fr Clarke was born in December 1946, the youngest of family of five born to Peter Clarke, a career civil servant, and his wife Greta Lysaght.
As a boy he attended nearby Willow Park and later Blackrock College.
At UCD he studied law and qualified as a solicitor in 1970.
He practiced with the Eugene F Collins
law firm where he was a partner when in 1976 and at the age of 29 he
entered Clonliffe College in Dublin to study for the priesthood.
In
1980 he was ordained at the Church of the Assumption, Booterstown, the
first priest to be ordained there though the church had opened in 1813.
He was appointed curate at Celbridge and Straffan, Co Kildare.
In 1983 he was appointed director of the Catholic Youth Council
in Dublin, then with a staff of 250, including 50 professional youth
workers, looking after the interests of about 180,000 young people.
In
1997 he was appointed Director of Communications for the Irish Catholic
Bishops’ Conference, the first man who was not a bishop to hold the
post.
His years in that office up to 2003 included some of the most turbulent experienced by the Catholic Church in Ireland over recent decades.
From
2003 he served briefly as Director of Communications for the Dublin
Archdiocese before becoming parish priest at Monkstown in 2004.
He was there five years until his appointment as parish priest at Donnybrook in 2009.
His removal will to the Church of the Sacred Heart at Donnybrook at 5pm tomorrow with funeral Mass there at 10am on Saturday.
Burial afterwards will be in Deansgrange cemetery.