Former president Dr Mary McAleese has been installed as an honorary lay canon at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin.
Along with three others, Dr McAleese was installed by the dean of the cathedral, the Very Revd Dermot Dunne, on Sunday.
She was among the first honorary lay canons appointed at the Church of Ireland cathedral. Honorary lay canons may attend chapter meetings at the cathedral and preach and serve for five years.
Also installed as a lay canon was Prof Jim Lucey, clinical professor of psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin.
The Rev Lorraine Kennedy-Ritchie, minister at Clontarf and Scots Presbyterian Church in Dublin, and Fr David Tuohy, a Jesuit priest who has spent most of his ministry in education, became ecumenical canons.
Separately, during the service, Dublin and Glendalough’s new youth ministry coordinator, Susie Keegan, was commissioned.
A bill allowing for the appointment of the honorary canons was passed at the church’s General Synod in Limerick in May.
Welcoming the new appointments, Archbishop Michael Jackson said they had "much to offer and to give in terms of the life of this cathedral church".
He said the church needed lay canons “from the coal-face secular disciplines of politics and medicine and ecumenical canons from the broad range of Christian and religious traditions”.
“All four of them, first and foremost, represent themselves,” he said.
“They represent the contribution in life they have made to life for others and with others in a wide range of fields and over sustained periods of time.”
