The founder of the Irish Samaritans and one of the country's best-known Church of Ireland clergymen, Canon Billy Wynn, has died at the age of 80. Since his retirement in 1988, he had been a contributor to the weekly Thinking Anew column in Saturday's Irish Times.
Born in Navan, the son of the local rector, he served in a number of parishes in Dublin and Wicklow before his final posting at St Ann's Church in Dublin's city centre. After establishing the Samaritans in Ireland, he ran a telephone service from his rectory in Monkstown during the 1960s, before becoming president of the Dublin branch of the organisation.