Michael Kelly is an award-winning writer and broadcaster specialising in religious and social affairs. Born and raised in Northern Ireland, he attended the Pontifical University St Patrick’s College, Maynooth where he obtained degrees in philosophy and theology and the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome where he studieD social institutional communications. From 2002-2005 he was an Editor in the Central Information Service of Vatican Radio. In this role, he travelled with Pope St John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI on overseas trips. In 2005, he returned to Dublin to take up the position of Deputy Editor with The Irish Catholic newspaper, succeeding as Editor in 2012. In 2016, he was appointed Consulting Editor of Columba Books, the Dublin-based publisher of religious and spiritual books. He is a regular contributor to programmes on RTÉ, BBC, UTV, CNN and Al Jazeera. He also have extensive experience offering media training and coaching in the voluntary sector. Mr Kelly is a weekly columnist with Ireland’s largest-selling secular newspaper the Irish Independent and has been published in The Irish Times, the Irish Examiner, The Irish News, The Guardian, Our Sunday Visitor, Catholic World Report, the National Catholic Reporter and the National Catholic Register. He writes from Ireland for Catholic News Service of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He is co-author with Austen Ivereigh of the best-selling book How to Defend the Faith Without Raising Your Voice. He is a frequent visitor to the Holy Land and is currently working on a new book on the holy places in the Holy Land which is due to be published in Autumn 2019.
The first time I visited Jerusalem, I was an impressionable 21-year-old. I fell in love with the place. Everything about the city was intoxicating to me: the sites, the smells, the sounds, the food, the religious diversity cheek by jowl…I was captivated on my first visit and it was to be the beginning of a…
At many parishes across the world, Massgoers enthusiastically sang “Easter glory fills the sky” on Sunday morning. It was dark plumes of smoke that filled the skies above churches in Sri Lanka as parishioners gathered for the most important festival in the Christian calendar. Occasions like Easter Sunday and Christmas Day are usually occasions of…
For the believer, Holy Week and Easter is the culmination of the Faith when we mark the saving death and lifegiving resurrection of the Saviour. Even if the non-religious relegate Easter to a mere festival of overindulgence in chocolate eggs, the glory of this festival transformed our world. The Carpenter of Nazareth revealed in the…
Shortly after his election to the papacy six years ago last month, Irish newspapers predicted with rare confidence that Pope Francis was set to appoint two Irishwomen to the College of Cardinals. The would-be Princesses of the Church were said to be former president Mary McAleese and Trinity College-based theologian Linda Hogan. At the time,…
Pilgrimage Supplement 2019 – Pathways With Purpose The Holy Land opens up the Scriptures in a way that touches everyone who goes there, writes Michael Kelly It’s not for nothing that the Holy Land has often been referred to as the ‘fifth Gospel’. I have been blessed to participate in more than a dozen…
“You’ll have to do something for the young people, Father!” If a priest had a fiver for every time a good-hearted and well-meaning parishioner offered this piece of unsought advice, he wouldn’t think twice about changing the car. The fact is that youth ministry is difficult and there’s no substitute for hard work. There’s no magic…
To better protect minors and vulnerable adults from all forms of abuse and exploitation, Pope Francis approved a new law and a set of safeguarding guidelines for Vatican City State and the Roman Curia. Pope Francis established the new norms and legal, criminal and safeguarding procedures with an apostolic letter given motu proprio (on his…
A man recently came up to me after an event in which I was participating in a neighbouring parish to his own. A hugely-committed man with a background in accounting, he recounted to me his not-so-happy brief membership of the finance council of his own parish. He had been approached to join the council by his…
Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger was the Archbishop of Paris until he retired in 2005. Lustiger – a convert from Judaism – was a towering figure in the global Church and considered a key ally in the reforms of Pope St John Paul II. Among the projects Cardinal Lustiger himself embraced with gusto was the reform of…
The first time I ever visited the United States it was to the state of Louisiana in the deep south. Unusually for the south of the US, Louisiana has a relatively healthy Catholic population with some 26% of residents identifying as members of the Church. Other states in the ‘Bible Belt’ like South Carolina, Georgia,…