Turning his back on legal studies for ordination in the Church of Ireland, Eames embarked on a three-year course at the divinity school of Trinity College, Dublin in 1960, but found the course "intellectually unsatisfying".

During his time at St Dorothea's, in the Braniel and Tullycarnet area of east Belfast, he developed a "coffee bar ministry" among young people, but The Troubles interrupted.

He turned down the opportunity to become dean of Cork and in 1974 was appointed rector of St Mark's in Dundela in east Belfast, a church with strong family links to C. S.

[6] On 9 May 1975, at the age of 38, he was elected bishop of the cross-border Diocese of Derry and Raphoe – in a groundbreaking move, he invited his similarly young Catholic counterpart, Edward Daly, to his consecration on 9 June.

Public unrest and violence escalated and over the next three summers the situation was unstable, with other parades coming under first police and later commission sanction.

Archbishop Eames, as diocesan bishop and civil leader found himself immersed in the search for a resolution to the issue.

A tribute to him in The Irish Times, assessing his years of public ministry and likely legacy noted that "behind the warm smile, many know there is a man of steel.

Their relatives were often shot when off duty and unable to defend themselves; their opponents were not obeying the rules of war as commonly understood.