Francis Walmsley

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Francis Joseph Walmsley CBE (9 November 1926 – 26 December 2017) was an English Catholic bishop who served as the Bishop of the Forces, the church for the British Armed Forces, from 1979 to 2002. He was born in Woolwich on 9 November 1926 and became a priest on 30 May 1953. On 8 January 1979 the Holy See named him Bishop of the Forces and Titular Bishop of Tamalluma. He was consecrated as a bishop on 22 February 1979, with Bishop Gerard Tickle as the main consecrator and Bishop Mario Conti and Archbishop Michael Bowen as co-consecrators.

In 1986 the British Forces church was raised from a military vicariate to a military ordinariate, giving it its current status. He stepped down as Titular Bishop of Tamalluma on 7 March 1998 and retired as Bishop of the Forces on 24 May 2002. He died on Boxing Day 2017 in Reading and is buried at St Michael's Abbey, Farnborough.