Bishop Pat Buckley dies at the age of 72

The Oratory Society said Bishop Buckley, who lived in Larne but was born in Offaly, died peacefully on Friday morning.

He was 72.

Bishop Buckley was the subject of many controversies — including police investigations — throughout his life.

In 2017, the former Catholic priest accused the hierarchy of the Church in Ireland of using the PSNI to conduct a vendetta against him over an online religious affairs blog he ran.

A potential case against him involving accusations of incitement to hatred had reportedly been dropped, but he told the Belfast Telegraph at the time that the 11-month-long saga convinced him that his former church was attempting to silence him by closing the site down.

Bishop Buckley was excommunicated in 1998 as a result of his ordination as a bishop into an independent church. A year later he came out as gay, and in 2010 married his partner in a civil ceremony.

In 2013, he admitted his involvement and was convicted for his part in 14 sham marriages in Northern Ireland, with the purpose of flouting immigration laws.

He received a three-and-a-half-year jail term, suspended for three years.

“I run a blog called ‘Thinking Catholicism’, which is critical of the Catholic Church hierarchy and they don’t like it,” Bishop Buckley told this newspaper in December 2017.

“On January 6 of this year Archbishop Eamon Martin reported a comment made on the blog to the PSNI as incitement to hatred. This comment wasn’t made by me, but someone who comments on the blog.

“There are people out there, probably pro-Catholic Church people, who do not like the blog and who are using the PSNI to close the blog down.”

He ran the online blog and posted on it regularly right up until his death.

In 2021, the contentious cleric branded evangelical preachers in Larne as “brainwashed parrots” and told them they are not welcome in the town for saying homosexuality is a sin.

Bishop Buckley lived in Larne with his husband Eduardo Yango, a Filipino chef.

He said then that he had never experienced homophobic abuse in the Co Antrim town: “You might expect a tale of horror from me, but nothing could be further from the truth.

“I’ve lived in this town for 37 years and I love it. I am very much part of the community.”

Bishop Buckley made headlines over the years for many reasons.

Seven years ago, he buried a 107-year-old Ballyclare Presbyterian in a cross-community service. Peggy Dunbar, who was then believed to have been Northern Ireland’s oldest woman, took a shine to the rebel priest when he married her eldest daughter over 30 years ago.

She never forgot him and her last wish was that he bury her. Mrs Dunbar died of pneumonia in February 2017. Her body had lain at rest in Bishop Buckley’s church, the Oratory, in Larne.