Ralph Ray Walsh who, on entering the Taizé Community in 1962, took the name of Brother Pascal, died on March 16, 2023, after a long illness.
He was born on October 12, 1940 in Illinois, USA. His father was a pastor and he had a brother, now deceased, and a sister.
Because of his membership in the Episcopal Church in the United States, he was the first to expand the range of denominational backgrounds of the brothers to the Anglican Communion.
After having collaborated in welcoming people to Taizé, he spent, from 1966 onwards, almost all his life with brothers in fraternities, where they lived close to the most vulnerable: in Chicago in a very poor neighborhood, in Brazil, in the city of Vitoria, in the United States again, where he was for some time in charge of the New York fraternity, and then finally once again in Brazil, in Alagoinhas. It was there that he spent the longest time: he helped many people with various addictions and, thanks to his artistic gifts, he created a stained-glass workshop that collaborated with many churches throughout Brazil and thus helped to support the material life of the fraternity.
He returned to Europe in 2015 and spent four years with two other brothers in Alsace, where he was able to showcase his refined sense of color through his weaving work. Then he returned to the hill of Taizé, gradually weakened by ailments that culminated in a painful lung cancer.