Bishop O'Hely was Beatified, along with his fellow Franciscan Friar and companion in martyrdom, Conn Ó Ruairc, by Pope John Paul II along with 15 other Irish Catholic Martyrs on 27 September 1992.

At Paris he took part in public disputations at the Sorbonne university, amazing his hearers by his mastery of patristic, Renaissance humanist, and Counter-Reformation theology, as well as of Scotist philosophy.

In autumn, 1579, he sailed from Brittany and arrived off the coast of Kerry after James Fitzmaurice had landed at Ard na Caithne from Portugal with the remnant of Thomas Stukeley's expedition.

[14] Even though O'Hely had advised the Vatican to support the First Desmond Rebellion, to all questions from Drury about future plans by the Pope and King Philip II of Spain for invading Ireland he made no answer and, in response, he was delivered to torture.

The two prisoners were first placed on the rack, their arms and feet were beaten with hammers, so that their thigh bones were broken and sharp iron points and needles were cruelly thrust under their nails, which caused an extreme agony of suffering.

"[16] According to Cardinal William Allen, the Elizabethan era English use of torture by the driving of needles and spikes under the finger- and toenails was, "one torment that people in Spain imagine to be that which will be worked by the Antichrist as the most dreadfully cruel of them all."

The Cardinal further explained that whenever a Recusant or Catholic priest would not "confess" or take the Oath of Supremacy under other forms of torture, the iron spikes would be used, "so that the nails of their fingers and toes were turned back.

"[17] Cardinal Moran continues, however, "For a considerable time they were subjected to these tortures, which the holy confessors bore patiently for the love of Christ, mutually exhorting one another to constancy and perseverance.

According to Philip O'Sullivan Beare, "Being surrounded there [Willis] surrendered to Roe by whom he was dismissed in safety with an injunction to remember his words, that the Queen and her officers were dealing unjustly with the Irish; that the Catholic religion was contaminated by impiety; that holy bishops and priests were inhumanely and barbarously tortured; that Catholic noblemen were cruelly imprisoned and ruined; that wrong was deemed right; that he himself had been treacherously and perfidiously kidnapped; and that for these reasons he would neither give tribute or allegiance to the English.