Notes for Photographers / Journalist / TV and Radio
Out of privacy and respect for the family, no photography or filming is
allowed within Saint Peter’s Cathedral. Photographs from the ceremony
for publication purposes will be made available to media by contacting
Father Edward McGee on +44 7811144268 and by email on dcpress@downandconnor.org.
Chief Celebrant
Bishop Donal McKeown, Apostolic Administrator of Down and Connor and Bishop of Derry.
Principal Concelebrants
Archbishop Eamon Martin, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland
His Eminence Cardinal Seán Brady, Archbishop Emeritus of Armagh
His Excellency Archbishop Luis Mariano Montemayor, Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland
Archbishop Noel Treanor, Apostolic Nuncio to the European Union and Bishop Emeritus of Down and Connor
Very Rev Brendan Beagon, Pastor Emeritus
Very Rev John Moley, Pastor Emeritus
Deacon
Rev Martin Whyte and Rev Patrick McNeill
Fellow Irish bishops will also be in attendance. The celebrant and
concelebrants will also be joined by the clergy of the Diocese of Down
and Connor and visiting clergy vested in choral dress. There will also
be representatives present from the Religious Orders, from the Lay
Faithful and Lay Apostolates with the Diocese of Down and Connor and
Civic representations.
Ecumenical Representatives in Attendance
Archdeacon Mark Harvey – Church of Ireland
Bishop Harold Miller – Church of Ireland
Bishop George Davison, Bishop of Connor – Church of Ireland
Dr Heather Morris – Methodist Church
Funeral homily delivered by Bishop Donal McKeown (to be checked against delivery)
One of the great strengths of our liturgical tradition is that, at
heart, the funeral of each baptised person is essentially the same. There will be many at some funerals. For all sorts of reasons, other
funerals will be small. But the format of the Mass and of the final
commendation are the same. The words of Job apply to all of us – naked I came into the world and naked I will depart (Job 1:21). We all come before the Lord, not laden with our achievements nor
burdened with our failings. We come empty handed with trust in the
mercy of God, asking – as we say in the Lord’s Prayer – that our sins be
forgiven just as we have forgiven those who sinned against us.
Our scripture readings today are those which were used at the funeral of
Bishop Patrick’s sister Mary. They reflect the age-old experience of
people of faith. Life is tough. Faith in the Jesus of Calvary could
not suggest anything different. Our first reading tells us that ‘it is good to wait in silence for the Lord to save’. Saint Paul writes to the Romans that ‘we
share (Christ’s) sufferings so as to share his glory … what we suffer
in this life can never be compared to the glory as yet unrevealed which
is waiting for us’.
Like another Patrick fifteen centuries before, young Patrick Walsh came
to walk among us as a boy, having spent his first years in Co Cork. He
had been born the third of four children, nine years after the border in
Ireland was created and a year before the fervour that was generated by
the International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin. Arriving in Northern
Ireland must have seemed like coming to an alien land for he had a
different accent and few local connections. But people of faith try to
flourish where they are planted. The effects of sin scar every
situation. In every place and every situation – in the words of Gerard
Manley Hopkins in God’s Grandeur:
‘And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell’
But Jesus and His early disciples knew that they had to proclaim the
Gospel in the painful concrete realities of first century Judaea,
Samaria and Galilee – and then far beyond, in season and out of season. One may sow and other may water – wrote Saint Paul – but it is God who
gives the growth. God’s mercy is to be proclaimed, not merely when
things are good but because things are often bad.
In Saint Luke’s Gospel, Jesus says that when we have done all that we are told to do, we say ‘we have done no more than our duty’ (Luke 17:10). The son of a civil servant, Bishop Patrick had a strong sense of duty
and loyalty to the Church in rapidly changing times, whether in
education, the Mater Hospital or during the many different sorts of
troubles that he had to deal with over the decades. Leadership is never
easy. It is often closer to a crucifixion than to an enthronement. The pain well outweighs the joys. Making decisions in turbulent times
is fraught with competing pressures. All a person can do is to seek
God’s guidance in prayer, grasp the nettles and trust that in all things
God is working for our salvation, even when we get things wrong. For
him, that meant trying to make sense of the early student demonstrations
in the late ’60s, leading a large school when Belfast descended into
chaos in the ’70s – and then having to accept the awful truth that some
of his ordained colleagues were capable of serial sexual abuse of
children. The one lesson that we learn from Mary and Joseph, the
shepherd and the Magi, Simeon and Anna is that God is in the mess, in
the wilderness more than in the transient glory of Temple. Those who
seek Him only in success, and among the strong, will fail to see Him
where He lies hidden.
Our Gospel passage is taken from Jesus’ prayer at the Last Supper, just
before His death on Good Friday. It speaks of Christ’s complete
confidence in His Father, despite what lies ahead. Over the least years
and months – and especially as the autumn closed in and his good friend
Bishop Tony Farquhar died in later November – Bishop Patrick knew that
his own death was approaching. He accepted his growing debility with
patience. But he could take seriously the words from our first reading –
the Lord is good to those who trust Him, to the soul that searches for
Him. The disciples of Jesus know that we all have to wait in joyful
hope for the coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. As children
of God, we are able to cry out ‘Abba, Father’ – and with Jesus, we can
say ‘into our hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.’
Today we lay him to rest in this Cathedral, on the restoration of which
he had dedicated so much time and energy before his retirement. Even
though he lived a life without ostentation, that 2005 restoration sought
to renew the exuberant neo-Gothic ornamentation of the original 19th
century building. Gerard Manley Hopkins was a child of that same
period, and he wrote of what gave him hope:
‘And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.’
Those who have glimpsed God’s grandeur know that we come before the Lord
with empty hands, conscious of our sinfulness but with a yearning
heart, trusting that our guilt will be forgiven, and we shall see Him
face-to-face.
We commend Bishop Patrick to God. May his soul and the souls of all the
faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.
Choir
Saint Peter’s Cathedral Choir and the Down and Connor Schola Cantorum
ENDS
Notes for Editors
Bishop Patrick Walsh was born in April 1931 in Cobh, Co Cork, but his family moved to Belfast when he was 11 years old.
He was educated at Saint Mary’s Christian Brothers’ Grammar School,
Belfast, before attending Queen’s University, Belfast, from 1948-1952,
where he took a BA Degree in Mathematics. From there he went to the
Pontifical Lateran University, Rome for four years, where he obtained a
Licentiate in Theology.
Bishop Walsh was ordained on 25 February 1956 in Rome following the
completion of his studies there and this was followed by two years in
Christ’s College, Cambridge where he obtained a MSc in Mathematics and
subsequently also obtained a MSc from Queen’s University.
In 1958 he was appointed to the staff of Saint MacNissi’s College,
Garron Tower and remained there until 1964, when he was appointed
Chaplain to the Catholic students attending Queen’s University. In 1970
he was appointed President of Saint Malachy’s College, Belfast.
Bishop Walsh was ordained as Auxiliary Bishop for the Diocese of Down
and Connor in 1983 and in 1991 he was appointed Bishop of Down and
Connor.
He was a member of various Episcopal Commissions including Justice and
Peace, and Chairman of the Department of Planning and Communications. He was a Trustee of Trocaire, a member of the Finance and General
Purposes Committee of the Irish Episcopal Conference, Chairman of the
Commission for Clergy, Seminaries, Vocations, a member of the Joint
Bio-ethics Committee of the Episcopal Conference of England and Wales,
Scotland and Ireland, and a member of the Irish Bishops’ Committee for
Bioethics.
He was a member of the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools and
Chairman of the Board of Governors of Saint Mary’s University College
and Chairman of the Trustees of the four Diocesan Colleges. He was also
Chairman of the Trustees of the Mater Hospital.
Bishop Walsh retired on 29 June 2008.