Walter Lynch (bishop)

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Walter Lynch (1595–1663) was an Irish church leader who became Bishop of Clonfert in the 1640s. He came to Ireland in 1647, was appointed on 11 March 1647, and was consecrated on 9 April 1648. After the Cromwellian conquest, he fled Ireland and spent the rest of his life serving in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Győr in Hungary. He died there on 14 July 1663. In 2003, a copy of the weeping image known as the Irish Madonna of Hungary—which Lynch had moved from the cathedral to protect it during the conquest—was given to the Diocese of Clonfert by Bishop János Pápai of Győr and now hangs in St Brendan's Cathedral, Loughrea.