Msgr Noel Treanor (54) is to be appointed the next Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor diocese, informed sources indicate. An announcement confirming this is expected shortly.
He will replace Bishop Patrick Walsh, who was 75 in 2006, the mandatory age for retirement of a bishop.
A priest of Clogher diocese, which includes Monaghan, most of Fermanagh, and parts of Tyrone, Donegal, Louth and Cavan, Msgr Treanor is currently general secretary of Comece, the Commission of Episcopal Conferences of the European Community, and based in Brussels. Comece monitors and analyses the political processes of the EU and keeps the church briefed on policy and legislation in it.
Down and Connor includes Antrim, most of Down and parts of Derry county and is the second-largest Catholic diocese (after Dublin) on the island of Ireland and probably the most politically sensitive, not least as it includes Belfast. It has a population of an estimated 300,000 Catholics.
There has been as much speculation about who would be Bishop Walsh's successor in the diocese as there had been about the selection of a new manager for Ireland's international soccer team, though the process involved in finding a new bishop for Down and Connor has taken considerably longer.