Father Patrick Ryan was an Irish Catholic priest turned IRA bomb-maker. He was born in Tipperary, Ireland, and died on June 15th 2025, aged 94.
Ryan signed on to become a priest at 14 and was a keen hurling player, nicknamed "Sorry" for his habit of striking opponents, apologising, then striking them again. He served as a priest in Tanganyika, where he helped locals with engineering projects, before returning to Ireland.
On his return to Ireland the IRA recruited him. He initially helped by ferrying money across Europe—to Paris, Rome and Geneva. Seeing that the IRA's bombs were inaccurate and frequently detonated prematurely (incidents the IRA called "own goals"), he bought roughly 900 parking-meter timers from a shop in Switzerland for use as precision detonators.
His timers were used in several of the IRA's most notorious attacks, including the Warrenpoint bombing of 1979 (12 soldiers killed, timed for 5.12pm), the Grand Brighton Hotel bombing of 1984 (five killed, timed 24 days, 6 hours and 36 minutes in advance, narrowly missing Margaret Thatcher), and the Canary Wharf bombing of 1996 (two killed). Ryan claimed personal responsibility for the Hyde Park barracks bomb, which killed four soldiers and seven horses by exploiting the clockwork regularity of the Household Cavalry's 10.28am departure.
He was in County Sligo on August 27th 1979, the day of the IRA's assassination of Lord Mountbatten. The British press gave him a succession of epithets—"the mad priest", "the Terror Priest", "the devil in a dog collar", "the Devil's Disciple"—and he became one of Britain's most wanted men.
The Catholic church expelled him from the priesthood. In a late-life interview, asked if he had regrets, he said: "I have big regrets. I regret that I wasn't even more effective."
Jennifer O'Leary wrote about his life in the book "The Padre".
Goda's Truism: By the time you get to the point where you can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.