LAST UPDATE | 24 Feb

FORMER BISHOP WILLIE Walsh won people over with “genuine Christian values through kindness, understanding, listening, generosity”, his funeral service heard.

Walsh, who died last Wednesday, was widely viewed as a progressive figure in the Catholic Church, making headlines in 1999 for his three-week pilgrimage where he walked to each church in his diocese to apologise for child sexual abuse scandals.

He served as the Bishop of the Killaloe Diocese for 16 years, before submitting his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI upon reaching the retirement age of 75 in 2010.

In an homily at his funeral service in Ennis today, the current Bishop of Killaloe Fintan Monahan descibed Walsh as a “profound and effective crusader”. 

“He did this through his unstinting work with the Traveling Community, his pastoral outreach to survivors of abuse, the sick, the vulnerable, so many who availed of his spiritual outreach as a true pastor of Jesus Christ.

Monahan said Walsh was radical, “in the true sense of the word”.

“Being frequently out-spoken, he stirred things up.  This sometimes ruffled feathers, was occasionally misunderstood, upset a few and others saw it as an effort to overturn hard earned orthodoxy. 

“However Willie, often in thinking out loud – did this with raw honesty, integrity, conviction and belief that his exploration, questioning was a legitimate response to arriving at the divinely revealed truth using the gifts that God generously bestowed upon us.”

In 2015, Walsh hit out at the Vatican for claiming that the passing of the marriage equality referendum in Ireland was a “defeat for humanity”.

These remarks were made by the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who said: “I think that you cannot just talk of a defeat for Christian principles, but of a defeat for humanity.”

Walsh told RTÉ Radio that this was an “inappropriate statement” and he added that it was “not one I think that represents the mind of Pope Francis despite it coming from a very senior Church figure”.

Walsh added: “There has been lots of disasters in the world but I certainly would not support the belief that the referendum was among them.”

Meanwhile, Walsh also voiced support for Catholic priests to be able to marry.