Walsh, Patrick (d. 1578), Church of Ireland and Roman catholic bishop of Waterford and Lismore, was a member of a family deeply involved in the merchant life and civic government of Waterford. Educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, he received his BA on 5 February 1532, his MA on 17 March 1535, and his BD in June 1545. Thereafter he returned to Waterford, where he was appointed dean of the cathedral on 9 March 1547. Following the resignation of Bishop Nicholas Comyn in 1551, Walsh was nominated on 9 June by the dean and chapter of Waterford to fill the position, and was consecrated on 23 October. At this time the government and Church of Ireland officially espoused a radical protestantism. However, Walsh and most of the clergy of Waterford and Lismore remained attached to the traditional catholic ritual while pragmatically paying lip service to protestant doctrine. Although the king confirmed Walsh's election as bishop, he was consecrated according to the Roman ordinal and no attempt was made to introduce protestant reforms in the diocese.
Following the accession of the catholic Queen Mary in 1553, the government deprived all bishops and clergy who were married. By then Walsh had fathered three children with a woman who appears to have been his concubine, but not his wife. This fine distinction appears to have enabled him to retain his see. His local influence and obvious religious conservatism may also have been factors in his survival. In 1555–6, he petitioned the papal legate, Cardinal Reginald Pole, for absolution and was absolved of schism and regranted his diocese.
After the reestablishment of protestantism as the state religion under Queen Elizabeth I from 1558, Walsh once more bowed to the prevailing politico-religious orthodoxy and supported the crown's reformation legislation in the 1560 Irish parliament. An account of this parliament, written in 1629 by a catholic clergyman, states that Walsh initially opposed the reintroduction of protestantism but then changed sides, and that this decision caused his fellow bishops to follow suit. However, this account appears to have confused Patrick Walsh with Bishop William Walsh (qv) of Meath. In June 1564 he was appointed to an ecclesiastical commission for enforcing the royal supremacy. He also appears to have married his concubine c.1558.
Although he declined to make a principled stand on his religious beliefs there can be little doubt that Walsh was a crypto-catholic. Within a year of Elizabeth's accession in 1558, he began selling off church property at very low prices, thereby contributing to the subsequent impoverishment of the diocese and hampering the progress of the reformation in that region. Moreover, much of this property probably fell into the hands of catholic sympathisers. Under his stewardship the Waterford region became the most strongly catholic part of Ireland. In 1577 the authorities captured the papal bishop of Cork and Cloyne, Edmund Tanner (d. 1579), and committed him to Walsh's custody in Waterford city. Tanner persuaded Walsh to abjure his nominal protestantism, apparently moving him to tears in the process. However, this rejection of the protestant faith remained strictly private. He had resigned his deanery on grounds of age and ill health on 15 June 1566, but continued as Church of Ireland bishop until his death in 1578. As if to mirror the apparent ambiguities over his own true religious convictions, his son, Nicholas Walsh (qv), who left home at a young age to study abroad, became a zealous protestant bishop of Ossory, while his daughter married a catholic schoolteacher in Waterford.