Yore, William (1781–1864), catholic priest, was born 22 May 1781 in St Paul's parish, Dublin. Nothing has been ascertained about his family. He attended the school in Saul's Court kept by Joseph Betagh (qv), the well-known secularised Jesuit priest, staying with William Gahan (qv) and eventually moving to Carlow College (1800). Wishing, like Gahan, to enter the Society of Jesus (suppressed by the pope in 1774) he went to Hodder near Stonyhurst in England in anticipation of its being revived, but, his plans frustrated, he returned to Carlow and was ordained priest there for the Dublin diocese (1809). His first appointment was as a curate in St James's parish and chaplain to Kilmainham Jail, where he is said to have attended 140 executions, many of them for minor offences. Yore was given charge of SS Michael and John's, Exchange St., as administrator (c.1825) and three years later became parish priest of St Paul's (1828–64). In St Paul's parish he founded an orphan society (1828) and a temperance society (1839); he built a neo-classical chapel (1835–7), designed by Patrick Byrne (qv), in Arran Quay, eventually furnishing it with a peal of bells – the first in any catholic church in Ireland since the Reformation; and he played a major role in the opening and management of the catholic cemetery at Prospect, Glasnevin (which belonged, when it opened in 1832, to St Paul's parish), organising the funeral there in 1847 of Daniel O'Connell (qv).
Yore was a founder of the Catholic Institute for the Deaf and Dumb and of the Catholic Book Society, and well known as a preacher of charity sermons, especially for orphanages. In the Catholic Book Society a close associate was William Joseph Battersby (qv), a bookseller specialising in Catholic books. William Yore was a vicar general (from 1828) and a papal chamberlain (from 1855). He declined the bishopric of Savannah (1837). During his pastorate at St Paul's he lived at 65 Queen St., a private house; he died 13 February 1864 and was buried at Glasnevin, where a monument to him was erected.