Patrick_Walsh_(bishop_of_Waterford_and_Lismore)
Patrick Walsh (died 1578) was an Irish prelate who served as the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore from 1551 to 1578.
A graduate of Brasenose College, Oxford, he was appointed the Dean of Waterford on 9 March 1547.[1] Four years later, Walsh was nominated the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore by Edward VI of England on 9 June 1551[2][3] and was consecrated by royal mandate on 23 October 1551.[2][3][4] He retained the deanery of Waterford until he resigned it on 15 June 1566.[1] After the accession of Queen Mary I, Walsh was recognized bishop by the Holy See in 1555/1556.[5][6] But following the accession of Queen Elizabeth I, Walsh supported the crown's reformation legislation in the 1560 Irish Parliament. In a letter of 12 October 1561, the papal legate Fr David Wolfe SJ described all the bishops in Munster as 'adherents of the Queen'.[7] Bishop Walsh was appointed to an ecclesiastical commission for enforcing the royal supremacy in June 1564. Described as a 'crypto-catholic' in 1577, Walsh had custody of the papal Bishop of Cork and Cloyne, Edmund Tanner, who described him as 'the heretical bishop of Waterford';[8] and persuaded him to make a 'strictly private' rejection of the Protestant faith.[9]
Bishop Walsh died in 1578,[2][3][4] and was described as a 'confirmed heretic' by the Franciscan Thomas Strange.[10]