Tributes are flowing for human rights activist and former YCS chaplain, Pat Walsh, who died in Melbourne on 28 December 2025 after a short battle with cancer.
Recording Pat’s passing on his Facebook page, Annie Keogh, his wife of more than forty years, wrote:
Annie, Mayra, Suzannah and Patricia want to let you know that Pat died at 5:40pm on Monday 29 December 2025 at home with family by his side. He was diagnosed with plasmablastic lymphoma early October this year.
After being in and out of hospital, he came home on Christmas Eve and we have had some precious days being with him and caring for him at home.
We have told stories, sung songs, hugged him and each other, cooked, played games with the kids, dug up his potatoes in the garden, cried, played Danny Boy on repeat and prayed.
It has been a very special time.
We also read him the messages of love and gratitude for his extraordinary life that have come in from family, friends and colleagues around the world.
It is likely the funeral will not be for a couple of weeks. We will let you know as soon as possible. Thank you for your love and support.
Our hearts are full and our hearts are broken.
“Hear then what Yahweh asks of you. To live justly, to love tenderly and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8
Timor Leste
Among the many who paid tribute to Pat was Timor Leste president, José Ramos Horta:
Pat will be remembered by many, a profound believer in justice, freedom, human dignity. Tireless, calm presence, extremely meticulous in research and writing.
I took Pat’s advice on many occasions. He was always there, everywhere, anytime, never away. Even as death approached he still wrote to me with information and new ideas.
In a similar vein, the Australian Embassy in Dili commented:
Pat Walsh was a steadfast friend of Timor-Leste and a champion of justice and human rights.
His compassion and integrity will be remembered by many in Timor-Leste and beyond.
We honour his legacy and extend our deepest sympathies to his family and loved ones.
Ai Kihara-Hunt recalled him as “the father of the Timor’s Commission on Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR-Timor Leste), and the incredible record of people and community’s experience Chega!”
Pat was also “a co-founder of Inside Indonesia and mentor to decades of editors and writers,” the magazine noted:
Pat was a humanitarian first and foremost, an activist for human rights and justice, as well as a writer of beautiful fiction and poetry. From our very first edition published in November 1983 to our most recent in November 2025, Pat has been there. We will miss his constant support these past 42 years, but we will always be guided by his true moral compass and a commitment to telling stories that reveal humanity and strive to uphold the dignity of all.
Salam, Inside Indonesia team
“Patrick Walsh was my teacher as I started out in advocacy, and had a big positive influence on my life,” wrote Marc Purcell, former CEO of the Australian Council for International Development. “From the time the late Herb Feith funded the ACFOA Burma Project, which I joined in 1995 -1998, where Pat was Director of the Australian Council for Overseas Aid (ACFOA) Human Rights Office, I learnt a lot watching him operate. He was very talented and had developed multifaceted ways of getting attention to build pressure for action on human rights.
He continued:
I observed him revealing abuses around the West Papua Freeport mine; engaging and motivating public servants into action at the DFAT NGO human rights dialogues he’d initiatited; using multiple channels to influence public opinion via journalists, and thereby the government; researching and building understanding of our neighbour Indonesia under the Suharto dictatorship, by working with academics through @Inside Indonesia magazine which he founded; advocating to MPs to take a stand on human rights (many did); supporting campaiging by Timorese and Australian activists; and fostering an activist network across Australia, and deep underground into Indonesia and occupied Timor Leste.
He was an ally of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, championing and fostering the Reconcilation movement born of Sir Ronald Wilson’s ‘Bringing them Home’ report on Australia’s Stolen Generations.
Pat made such a big contribution to the independence struggle of the Timorese people; a real difference to the rights of the people of Indonesia in their struggle to overthrow an authoritarian dictatorship; and to building a human rights movement in Australia in the 1970s to 2000s. He is a great Australian who cared about our world and universal human rights.
Human Rights Council of Australia
A statement from the Human Rights Council of Australia remembered Pat as “an Australian human rights hero, working for decades in and with leading Australian and international human rights organisations and movements.”
The statement continues:
He was a rigorous researcher and a tireless advocate who fought the good fight to the end.
Pat was a leading human rights advocate across many fields but his greatest and largest work related to Timor Leste. He was one of the first in Australia to respond to the Timorese calls for the right to self-determination, and to understand its links with Indonesia’s movements for human rights and democracy. From 1975 he worked with refugee, diaspora, faith, development and human rights non-government organisations and unions to build solidarity, to make Australian governments listen to these voices and live up to their obligations under international law. He refused to give it up as a lost cause. He was supported by the Australian Council for Overseas Aid which made Pat the first Director of its Human Rights Office.
At the same time Pat took on a significant role in working with human rights movements across Asia and the Pacific at a pivotal time – as democracy movements in South Korea, Nepal, the Philippines and Thailand were transforming the region. He was there working with these movements as they adopted the influential Asian NGO Declaration on Human Rights and in Vienna for the UN Second World Conference on Human Rights where the governments of Asia joined others in reaffirming that human rights belong to all people and peoples everywhere – the universality of human rights.
Pat helped to link Australian development and human rights NGOs to Asia through the establishment of the Asia-Pacific Facilitating Team on Human Rights, obtaining funding for its first secretariat in Bangkok. Banned from Indonesia by President Suharto’s government, he was welcomed into the Presidential Palace by President Habibie in 1998.
As soon as the Timorese voted in September 1999 for their independence, Pat was there to help them build their new democracy. He lived in Timor Leste for many years working with the Timorese leadership and at various times with the UN Human Rights Office and, most importantly, with the Timor Leste Reception, Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In fact, he was one of the principal authors of the Commission’s final report, Chega!, and the huge volume of materials that accompanied it. He saw this work as a critical foundation stone for Timor’s democracy, enabling the voices of the victims to be heard and for truths to be told. It is a model that he shared with First Nations leaders in Australia.
Pat worked to ensure that the Chega! report was translated into Bahasa Indonesia and distributed through Indonesia, so that Indonesian people could understand their country’s role in Timor Leste, including the proud role of so many Indonesian democracy and human rights advocates in its struggle for self-determination. He was ceaseless in his determination that knowledge of the past be used to help build a better future – that, while past crimes against humanity and human rights violations may be forgiven, they must not be forgotten. A co-founder of the influential journal Inside Indonesia, Pat was a remarkable builder of bridges between peoples and causes as he continued his advocacy for the cause of human rights and self-determination for West Papua.
No Australian is better known and more respected in Timor Leste from the top political leadership to the ordinary people in villages and towns throughout the country. Pat was deeply proud to have received Timor Leste’s highest civilian honour. While his advocacy for human rights in Timor Leste was often a thorn in the side of successive Australian governments, he also received the Order of Australia in acknowledgement of his unique contribution to human rights. He was well known and highly respected regionally and internationally, as tributes from all over since his death indicate.
YCS chaplain
Dr Cait McMahon, who worked for the Melbourne YCS when Pat was national chaplain, wrote:
Vale Patrick Walsh – love to Annie Keogh, Mayra, Suzannah and Patricia and their families. Pat was a significant influence in my growing social justice understanding since the age of 15 through the YCS.
I was lucky enough to be one of the 528 Brunswick St crew, sharing a house with Pat for a while. Thank you Pat for making the world, and my life richer.
Pat told the story of his own YCS formation in an interview for ATF Press:
My first experience of Jocism was atending a Young Christian Worker (YCW) summer school for seminarians at Lowanna in Melbourne. It had a decisive impact on me. The impressive presenters (young lay leaders and the charismatic Fr K.J. Smith) and Joseph Cardijn’s work gelled with my reading about the exciting priest-worker movement and other social apostolates for the marginalised in France. It also fitted well with new emphases coming from the Second Vatican Council on the lay apostolate, the unity of faith and life, and engagement with the world. Aged 24 and newly ordained, I came away committed to making the principles of Jocism integral to my future work, whatever that might be. I also
came away with a YCW perspective, not one informed by the Melbourne YCS model of the day.
READ MORE
Funeral video and tributes (Tobin Bros)
Pat Walsh recalls his YCS formation
Like a bird on the wire (Pat Walsh website)
Patrick Walsh – Statement by the Human Rights Council of Australia (Human Rights Council of Australia)