An extraordinary life that was fully lived
BORN in Kerry on April 24 1927, Eamonn Casey was educated in Limerick and in Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth from where he was ordained to the priesthood for the Diocese of Limerick in 1951. Over the following nine years he worked as a curate in two Limerick city parishes - Monaleen and Saint John’s - before being appointed to the Irish Emigrant Chaplaincy Service in England.
Between 1960 and 1969 the then Father Casey pioneered the provision of housing for Irish emigrants to England and in 1963 was appointed National Director of the Catholic Housing Aid Society by the Bishops Conference of England and Wales.
Appointed Bishop of Kerry in 1969, Bishop Casey became the first chairman of Trócaire, the Irish Catholic Church’s overseas development agency, at its foundation in 1973. He became Bishop of Galway in July 1976.
Over the next 16 years he worked to ensure that the Diocese of Galway responded effectively to a very significant growth in the urban population, dedicating new churches and establishing the ‘Meitheal Programme’ in response to exorbitant bank interest rates.
Bishop Casey was present at the funeral of his murdered friend Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador when the liturgy was interrupted by bombs and intense gunfire which left almost 50 mourners dead. Bishop Casey also voiced strong objections to the visit of Ronald Regan to Galway in 1984 over American foreign policy particularly in Central America. The highlight of his time in Galway was his organising and hosting of the visit of Pope John Paul II to the city on September 30, 1979.
Bishop Casey resigned as Bishop of Galway in May, 1992 following disclosures that in 1974, as Bishop of Kerry, he fathered a son. Subsequently Bishop Casey worked as a missionary priest with the Society of Saint James in Ecuador until 1998 when he returned to parish ministry in the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton in the south of England. In 2006 he came home to live in Shanaglish, Co Galway and subsequently at Carrigoran Nursing Home in Co Clare.