Of your charity please pray for the soul of Canon Donald Walker Obl/OSB, priest, who died, following a long illness, bravely bourne, in hospital, in the early hours of Saturday 1st March 2025.
Pray too for his sons, Simon and Robert and their families. Canon Walker was pre-deceased by his wife Diana, whom he married in 1963.
Canon Donald Walker was born in 1932 and did his national Service between 1953 and 1955, after which his secular career began when he joined the National Health Service and trained as a nurse, rising in due course to the position of Senior Nursing Officer responsible for 9 hospitals within the Merton, Sutton, Wandsworth Area health Authority. After taking early retirement in 1984 he became a Director of a nursing home, working there until he retired in 1996.
Obtaining his various nursing qualifications and registration between 1955 and 1961, he undertook his theological education at the University of London graduating in 1981. From then until he joined the ACC, he worked in the Church of England as Pastoral Assistant and Licenced Lay Reader. He joined the Anglican Catholic Church soon after the establishment of the Missionary Diocese of England and Wales in 1992. He was ordained as deacon by The Right Reverend Leslie Hamlett, First Bishop Ordinary of the Diocese of the United Kingdom, Anglican Catholic Church, on 13th April 1996 and priested by Bishop Hamlett the following year, on 1st February 1997.
Canon Walker served his curacy at the Anglican Catholic Church of St Anastasia, Boscombe, Dorset from April 1996 until January 1997, when he became priest in charge of the Mission of St Bede’s, Thames Ditton. He retired from active ministry in 2022 and the Mission in Thamesditton closed.
Canon Walker served for many years as Chairman of the Diocesan Board of Ministry and was appointed by The Right Reverend Damien Mead, second Bishop Ordinary to the Diocese of the United Kingdom, as an Honorary Canon in recognition of his long and devoted service to the Church in April 2009.
Canon Walker will be missed by his bishop, brother clergy and the laity of the Diocese of the United Kingdom, but they are gladdened by the knowledge that his brave struggle with increasingly debilitating health issues over so many years has finally come to an end. Funeral details to follow.
In Paradisum
+ Into Paradise may the Angels lead him: at his coming may the Martyrs receive him, and bring him into the holy city Jerusalem. May the Choir of Angels receive him, and with Lazarus, once poor, mayest he have eternal rest. Receiving his soul: Offering it in the sight of the Most High.
+ Rest eternal grant unto him, O Lord: and let light perpetual shine upon him. Offering it in the sight of the Most High.
