William Keane (bishop)

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William Keane (born on April 7, 1805 at Castlemartyr, County Cork) was a Roman Catholic bishop from Ireland. He studied at the Irish College in Paris, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1828 in Paris for the Cloyne Diocese. He took up a position on the staff of the Irish College and remained there until 1839. [1]

He then returned to Ireland and became cc in Fermoy from 1939 to 1841 when he was appointed parish priest of Midleton. He was appointed Bishop of Ross (at that time an independent diocese) on 20 December 1850 (SCPF Decree Dec. 9th 1850). He was ordained Bishop on 2 February 1851. He was Bishop of Ross from 1851 to 1857, at which time he was translated to Cloyne on 15 May. (SCPF Decree May 5th 1857). He was Bishop of Cloyne from 1857 until his death on 15 January 1875. He was buried in a temporary vault of the pro-cathedral, and later re-interred in the new Cobh Cathedral of St. Colman. The pro-cathedral was the temporary church built to accommodate the parish while St. Colman’s was being built on the site of the old parish church.

Bishop Keane initiated the building programme for St. Colman’s, set up a committee to oversee the work and donated £500 of his own money to start the funding campaign. He wanted the Cathedral to be of a grand design and highly ornamented. For the last six years of his life he worked towards that goal.

During his episcopacy of Cloyne St. Colman’s College Fermoy was founded and several convents were established to promote Catholic education. He was the preacher at the final session of the Provincial Synod in 1863 in Cashel. He was a strong advocate of the rights of the Irish tenants and succeeded in getting a House of Commons Select Committee set up to examine the whole question in 1865. Brady in his monumental work The Episcopal Succession in England, Scotland and Ireland, made this assertion: “No Bishop in the Irish Church was more respected than Dr. Keane while none surpassed him in devotion to the interests of the Church, of his country and of his flock”.

On his death the Cork Examiner said he was “The learned theologian, the profound scholar, the deep and sound thinker, the ardent Catholic, the unflinching patriot, the lover of the poor and the oppressed, the finished gentleman and withal the perfect Christian”.