Question: Which Irish priest and author was the father of Maria Brontë?
Context: Maria Branwell (15 April 1783 – 15 September 1821) was the mother of British writers Emily Brontë, Anne Brontë and Charlotte Brontë, and of their brother, Branwell Brontë, who was a poet and painter. Father Paul Walsh (Irish: "An tAthair Pól Breathnach" ), (19 June 1885 – 18 June 1941) was an Irish priest and historian. Maria Brontë ( , "commonly" ; 23 April 1814 – 6 May 1825) was the eldest daughter of Patrick Brontë and Maria Brontë, née Maria Branwell. William Gahan (5 June 1732 in the parish of St. Nicholas, Dublin – 6 December 1804 in the parish of St. Nicolas, Dublin) was an Irish priest and author.  He entered on his novitiate in the Augustinian Order, 12 Sept., 1748 and made his solemn profession 18 Sept., 1749.  Shortly afterwards he was sent to the Catholic University of Leuven, where he commenced his ecclesiastical studies, 1 June 1750.  He was ordained priest 25 May 1755, but remained some years longer in the university to obtain his degree of Doctor of Divinity.  In 1761 he returned to Dublin, and the supply of parochial clergy at the time being insufficient, he was asked by Archbishop Lincoln, and was permitted by his superiors, to take up the work of a curate in St. Paul's Parish.  After three years in this capacity he returned to his convent in St. John's Street, where, in the leisure intervals of an ever-active missionary life, he composed the well-known "Sermons and Moral Discourses", on which his literary reputation chiefly rests. Monsignor Patrick Joseph Whitney (1894 - 1942), was an Irish priest who in 1932 founded the Saint Patrick’s Society for the Foreign Missions known as the Kiltegan Fathers.  He was training as a priest in Maynooth College for the Diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise when on the invitation of Bishop, Joseph Shanahan, he volunteered as a priest in Nigeria where he went with Fr Roynane in the 1920s.  His cousin Fr Patrick Francis Whitney was one of the first three members of the society. Charles O'Conor (Irish: "Cathal Ó Conchubhair Donn" ; 1764–1828) was an Irish priest and historical author.  He was chaplain and librarian to the Marchioness of Buckingham and catalogued many manuscripts, including the famous Stowe Missal, now in the Royal Irish Academy.  His grandfather was the historian Charles O'Connor, his brother the historian Matthew O'Conor. Risteard De Hindeberg (Rev. Dr. Richard Henebry Ph.D.) was an Irish priest, educator, Irish language activist, musician, collector, and author. Fr.  Thomas Carroll is an Irish priest in the Greek Orthodox Church.  His parish in Dublin is part of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain.  Thomas Carroll was accepted into the Orthodox church on Palm Sunday 1986.  Fr Thomas Basil Carroll was ordained a deacon and priest of the Orthodox church the first Irish born person ordained.  He is a graduate of St. Patrick's, Carlow College earning a BA degree in Humanities (Philosophy and Theology).  He also holds a post graduate diploma in communications and a master's degree in Theology from the Pontifical University, Maynooth.  Fr.  Carroll served in the Irish Armed Forces, in Cyprus, before joining the Greek Church.  Since 2007 Fr Carroll has been responsible for the Church of the Annunciation in Arbour Hill in Dublin Egidio Galea (5 May 1918 – 3 January 2005) was a Maltese Augustinian Roman Catholic priest, missionary, and educator, and a significant figure in the Catholic resistance to Nazism in Italy during World War II.  He was a close aide to the Irish priest Hugh O'Flaherty. Patrick Brontë ( , "commonly" ; 17 March 1777 – 7 June 1861) was an Irish priest and author who spent most of his adult life in England.  He was the father of the writers Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, and of Branwell Brontë, his only son.  Patrick outlived his wife, the former Maria Branwell, by forty years by which time all of their children had died as well.
Answer: Patrick Brontë