Irish Independent/1932/Loss to the Dominican Order—Rev. Reginald Walsh dead

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Loss to the Dominican Order

Rev. Reginald Walsh dead

Very Rev. Reginald Walsh, O.P., who died in St. Mary's, Tallaght, has been an outstanding figure in the Dominican Order and in the Church in Ireland in the past 50 years.

Born in Dublin in 1855, he entered the Order in Tallaght Novitiate in 1870. He made his course of studies there and in St. Mary's. Cork, till 1877, when he was sent to take his degree, at the Dominican College of the Minerva, Rome. He was ordained priest in 1878, and two years later, having completed his studies, he began his professorial career, teaching Sacred Scripture at the Minerva.

From there he was transferred as Regent of Studies to Tallaght. It was then that he became the intimate friend of Father Thomas Burke, whose holiness impressed him so greatly that one of his last ambitious was to leave some record of it in writing. Death, unhappily, has come to interrupt his work.

In 1902 Fr. Reginald was made Master of Theology. During a long life spent in teaching, whether at Tallaght, Maynooth, Vienna, or Rome, he showed himself a master in practically every branch of Sacred Science. Busy always with pen or typewriter, innumerable scattered writings of his remain to attest to his versatility and deph of thought.

In the Irish Church, Father Reginald Walsh will be especially remembered for his work in the cause of the Irish Martyrs. It was a labour involving untold self-sacrifice, but it was a labour of love. Even in his last illness he was garnering stray hits of evidence that he had noted years ago in his research work in the great libraries of Europe, that he might yield the last of his strength in furtherance of the cause that was so dear to his heart.