[1][2] From Mitchelstown, County Cork,[3] he is a well-known member of the Independent Catholic movement in Ireland[2] and is also known for ordaining the singer Sinéad O'Connor.
[3][4] Michael Patrick Cox was ordained to the priesthood in Switzerland on 1 May 1978 as part of Order Mater Dei by Bishops Maurice "Hermenegildo" Revaz (Bishop Superior at the time), William "Rufino" Daly, Richard "Sixto" Corr, James Boyle and Ciaran "Bernardo" Broadbery.
[1] This Order was founded by a group of former Bishops of the Carmelites of the Holy Face who had left when this order under Clemente Domínguez y Gómez transformed into the Palmarian Catholic Church, with Clemente claiming he had been crowned Pope Gregory XVII of the Catholic Church by Jesus Christ.
In June 1998, Jim Cantwell, director of the Irish Catholic Press and Information Office, said that Cox's consecration of Buckley was valid but illicit.
[1] In 2001, Cox planned to convert his 75-foot (23 m) commercial fishing trawler, called The Little Bishop, into "a mobile floating church, offering on-board marriages and baptisms to people around the British Isles.
[19][20] In 2013, a District Court judge requested that the Garda Síochána investigate a marriage conducted by Cox for a 17-year-old Traveller youth and his partner.