Most Rev Dr Michael Patrick Cox, MA, OMD (born 1945 or 1946) is an Irish independent bishop.[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] He is the founder and bishop superior of the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church.[3]
Cox was an Irish soldier and a Dún Laoghaire harbour policeman.[3][4]
Michael Patrick Cox was ordained to the priesthood in Switzerland on 1 May 1978 by Bishops Maurice Revaz (Bishop Superior at the time), John Daly, Richard Corr, James Boyle, Ciarain Broadbery.[1] He was then validly consecrated Bishop in Dublin by Broadbery on 27 April 1982 and subsequently appeared on The Late Late Show shortly afterwards.[1][5][6][a][b]
Broadbery was consecrated in 1977 by Clemente Domínguez y Gómez of the independent Palmarian Catholic Church, who in turn was consecrated by Archbishop Ngô Đình Thục.[5][6][9] In September 1976, Thục, and those he had ordained, were excommunicated from the Catholic Church.[10][11]
Cox offered Tridentine Masses at Monkstown, County Dublin, in the mid-1980s.[3]
Cox's church is St Colman's, in the townland of Cree near Birr, County Offaly.[2][3][c]
In May 1998, Cox consecrated a Catholic priest, Patrick Buckley, as a bishop. 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.[13] However, the Catholic Media Office of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales later "said that it doubts that the bishop's episcopal consecration is valid".[14]
In April 1999, Cox ordained female rock singer Sinéad O'Connor as a priest. Her ordination ceremony, after six weeks of theological study, was held in a Lourdes hotel bedroom. O'Connor then assumed the religious name of "Mother Bernadette Mary".[15] This action is not considered valid within the Catholic church[16]
At The Sacred Council held at St Colman's Church in the townland of Cree near Birr, Co Offaly 21–23 April 2000, Bishop Cox was elected Archbishop-Patriarch of OMD for life and to hold a veto over the whole order of OMD.[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."[17] Cox planned to protest against the ship being sailed into Ireland by the pro-choice feminist group Women on Waves.[17] In 2004, Cox's 84-foot (26 m) trawler, called The Patriarch, caught fire while underway and sank.[4][18]
In 2011, Cox was a candidate in the general election for the Laois–Offaly constituency, coming last with 60 votes.[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.[21] Civil marriages in Ireland require that the participants are over 18, or have a Court Exemption Order if this is not the case.[22] Cox states that such weddings conducted by him are religious, not civil, so there is no religious reason why somebody 16 years old should not get married.[23]
I recognise their [Traveller] customs and appreciate them. Anyone who asks why I do what I do- I tell them that I make it clear the wedding ceremony is purely religious. I do not register marriage with the state.
— Michael Cox[23]
Cox insists on parental consent and parents being present at the ceremony.[23]