William Conway (cardinal)

William John Cardinal Conway (22 January 1913 – 17 April 1977) was an Irish cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who served as Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland from 1963 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1965.

He was head of the Catholic Church in Ireland during the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

Conway was born in Dover Street, Belfast, on 22 January 1913 and baptised in St. Peter's Pro-Cathedral.

He was the eldest of nine children.

His father, Patrick Joseph Conway, was a house painter and ran a paint shop near Royal Avenue; his mother, Annie Donnolly, came from Carlingford on the Cooley Peninsula in the north of County Louth.

He attended Boundary Street Primary School, St Mary's CBS (now St Mary's Christian Brothers' Grammar School, Belfast), Queen's University Belfast; St Patrick's College, Maynooth; and the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome.

He emerged with a doctorate in canon law summa cum laude tying for a gold medal with a German Jesuit.

Conway was ordained for the Diocese of Down and Connor on 20 June 1937.

After further studies in Rome in 1937–1941, he served on the staff of St. Malachy's College, Belfast, 1941–1942, teaching Latin and English.

In 1942 he was appointed Professor of Moral Theology in Maynooth and of canon law the following year, holding both professorships until 1958.

Canon Joseph Conway was ordained in 1947 and taught at St. Malachy's College until his appointment as President of St. Patrick's College, Knock in 1967.

He was vice-president in 1957–1958.

Two of his brothers, alumni of St. Mary's CBS, also became priests of the Diocese of Down and Connor.

An even younger brother, Canon Noel Conway was ordained in 1957 and also taught at St. Malachy's College where he became president in 1983.

Conway was appointed Titular Bishop of Neve and Auxiliary of Armagh on 31 May 1958, consecrated on 27 July 1958 in St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh where he served under Cardinal John D'Alton.

He was made Administrator of St. Mary's Church in Dundalk and at forty-five was the youngest Bishop in Ireland at the time.

After D'Alton's death Conway was appointed Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland on 9 September 1963 by Pope Paul VI.

Conway was the leading Irish participant in the Second Vatican Council, at which his peritus was future Archbishop of Armagh Cahal Daly.

On 22 February 1965 he was raised by Pope Paul VI to the cardinalate at the same consistory as his friend John Heenan of Westminster.

Cardinal Conway was created and proclaimed Cardinal-Priest of San Patrizio.

In the years after Vatican II, Cardinal Conway worked hard to implement the decrees of the council.

Ireland was well ahead of other countries in introducing the vernacular into the Mass on 7 March 1965.

Cardinal Conway marked the day by celebrating Mass in Irish in the Franciscan College in Gormanstown, County Meath.

He reorganised the Irish Bishops Conference, setting up several commissions such as Justice and Peace, Laity, Social Welfare.

He was invited to Poland in 1966 to the celebrations to mark one thousand years of Polish Christianity, but he was refused a visa by the Communist government and could not attend.

Conway presided over the Irish Church at the outbreak of the Troubles and, as a native of Belfast and a priest of the diocese of Down and Connor, was well-placed to respond to the demands of the era.

On 12 September 1971, after the introduction of internment, he and his fellow Northern bishops issued a statement in which they both criticised internment and denounced the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) as "the small group of people who are trying to secure a united Ireland by the use of force".

In a much-quoted phrase of the Cardinal's the statement went on to pose the question, "Who in their sane senses wants to bomb a million Protestants into a united Ireland?"

Later that year, after the murder of an Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier by the IRA near Caledon, Cardinal Conway said: "This latest and most cruel murder will send a chill of horror throughout the whole community. The persons responsible for such a barbaric act have lost all sense of the sacredness of human life and have thereby become less than human."

He was equally strong in his condemnation of loyalist paramilitaries who killed members of his diocese whose funerals he often attended.

In 1973 Archbishop Simms invited Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey to lecture at the Refresher Course for Church of Ireland clergy.

The visit took place from 30 April to 3 May and Simms arranged for Ramsey and Conway to meet.

Conway held to the policy of church leaders acting together, so that they could best advance their cause for peace.

In May 1974 when James Devlin, a well-known Gaelic Athletic Association player in County Tyrone, was killed along with his wife Gertrude, around 2,000 people attended their funerals.

On that occasion Conway said: "In the past three days I have looked upon coffins of seven utterly innocent people who have been ruthlessly cut down. During the past week eleven people have been murdered, one a member of the security forces, the other ten all Catholics. One must raise one's voice to high heaven against this slaughter of the innocent, irrespective of the religion of the victim."

Conway was keen throughout his time as Primate of All-Ireland to develop and maintain good relations with the leaders of other Christian churches on the island.

He enjoyed a particularly close friendship with his Church of Ireland counterpart as Primate in Armagh, George Simms.

In 1986 he became Parish Priest of Kircubbin and died in 2008.

In 1990 he became Parish Priest of Strangford.

In the 2006 releases of Public Records from the year 1975 there exists a one-page note of a meeting between Harold Wilson, then British Prime Minister, and the leaders of the main Churches in Northern Ireland (Cardinal Conway, Archbishop George Simms, Temple Lundie, the Rev Harold Sloan, the Rev Donald Fraser).