His father, Patrick Joseph Conway, was a house painter and ran a paint shop near Royal Avenue; his mother, Annie Donnolly, came from Carlingford on the Cooley Peninsula in the north of County Louth.

After D'Alton's death Conway was appointed Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland on 9 September 1963 by Pope Paul VI.

[1] Conway was the leading Irish participant in the Second Vatican Council, at which his peritus was future Archbishop of Armagh Cahal Daly.

He was invited to Poland in 1966 to the celebrations to mark one thousand years of Polish Christianity, but he was refused a visa by the Communist government and could not attend.

Conway presided over the Irish Church at the outbreak of the Troubles and, as a native of Belfast and a priest of the diocese of Down and Connor, was well-placed to respond to the demands of the era.

In a much-quoted phrase of the Cardinal's the statement went on to pose the question, "Who in their sane senses wants to bomb a million Protestants into a united Ireland?"

In May 1974 when James Devlin, a well-known Gaelic Athletic Association player in County Tyrone, was killed along with his wife Gertrude, around 2,000 people attended their funerals.

Conway was keen throughout his time as Primate of All-Ireland to develop and maintain good relations with the leaders of other Christian churches on the island.

In the 2006 releases of Public Records from the year 1975 there exists a one-page note of a meeting between Harold Wilson, then British Prime Minister, and the leaders of the main Churches in Northern Ireland (Cardinal Conway, Archbishop George Simms, Temple Lundie, the Rev Harold Sloan, the Rev Donald Fraser).

The background was the secret talks held between representatives of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Protestant clergy at a location in Feakle, County Clare, on Tuesday 10 December 1974.

On 18 December 1974 the Protestant clergy met with Merlyn Rees, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, to report on their meeting with the IRA.

Seán Cardinal Brady denied that the wider Church was involved in a cover-up to protect Father Chesney, and he accepted the report's findings.

[1] The Requiem Mass was celebrated by the senior suffragan of the Armagh province, Bishop William Philbin, assisted by the late Cardinal's two brothers.

Holding his high office at a time of undoubted difficulty, he gave courageous and faithful leadership without losing his inherent patience and gentleness.