CANON Denis Tangney, who has died aged 90, was one of the great Roman Catholic parish priests of the 20th century who spent his entire priesthood in the Leeds Diocese.
He was highly regarded as a priest whose ministry was marked by his quiet dignity and ready smile.
He was born in the south-west of Ireland and was the 10th in a family of 11 children who came from farming stock.
Educated in Killarney, at 18 he went to All Hallows College, in Dublin, to train for the priesthood. In June 1941 he was accepted by Bishop John Poskitt, the then Bishop of Leeds, as a student for the diocese, and was ordained at All Hallows five years later.
He then came to Yorkshire to take up his first appointment as a curate at St Patrick’s parish in Leeds, a long-established inner-city parish which was then at the heart of Catholic Leeds.
He stayed for five years and later said that he had enjoyed every minute of his time there.
Between 1951 and 1963, he served as curate in a further five parishes across the diocese, in Batley, Shipley, Moortown in Leeds, Pontefract and Sheffield. In July 1963, he was appointed as parish priest of St Patrick’s, Grimethorpe, before moving to St Mary’s, Rothwell, in 1966.
His last move to came in the summer of 1968 when he went to St Theresa’s, at Cross Gates. After retiring, he lived in Whitkirk, Leeds, but moved to Mount St Joseph’s Home, in Headingley, where he was cared for by the Little Sisters of the Poor. His funeral is at St Theresa’s Church, on Monday at 11am.