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. 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. Micheal finished his stint as Editor of The Irish Catholic in January 2024 and has taken up the position of Director of Public Affairs for Aid to the Church in Need Ireland.
The nearly 2,000 Irish pilgrims who were present at World Youth Day in Lisbon with Pope Francis have been urged to use the experience to invite their friends back to the Church. Pope Francis told more than 1.5 million pilgrims at the weekend that the Church is a home for everyone, and that no-one should…
The young Irishwoman who carried the Irish tricolour flag at the opening ceremony of World Youth Day said she felt that she was representing the entire nation in Lisbon. Charlene Duff told The Irish Catholic that carrying the flag was “an absolute honour”. She described it as the “icing on the cake” as the Portlaoise-native attended her…
Pope Francis told 1.5 million weary-eyed and sleep-deprived young people in Lisbon not to let their “great dreams” of changing the world be “stopped by fear”. In his homily for the closing Mass of World Youth Day on Sunday the Pope asked for “a bit of silence” from the pilgrims who, after staying overnight in…
Before 200,000 pilgrims at Fátima, many of them with tears in their eyes, Pope Francis called for a new Marian devotional title – ‘Our Lady in a Hurry’ – to describe how Mary hastens to care for all her children. “There are many Marian invocations,” he told the crowd at the Shrine of Our Lady…
After many of the 1.5 million young people gathered in Lisbon’s Tejo Park waited for hours in near 40-degree weather to participate in the World Youth Day vigil with Pope Francis on Saturday, the Pope asked them, “Have you ever been tired?” Even when tempted to “throw in the towel” or stop along the journey…
When feelings of suffering, anxiety and loneliness bring young people to tears, Jesus cries with them and walks alongside them on the way of the cross, Pope Francis has said. After hundreds of thousands of young people spent hours singing, dancing and chanting under the sun waiting for the Pope to arrive in Lisbon’s Eduardo…
Young people were going to Confession on street corners and park benches throughout Lisbon during World Youth Day, but in the 150 plywood confessionals set up in Vasco da Gama Garden three of them found themselves face to face with Pope Francis. Donning a purple stole, the Pope heard their confessions in the riverside garden,…
Before a sea of waving flags representing countries large and small from across the globe, Pope Francis told some 500,000 singing, shouting and swaying young people that God has called each person to him by name, not their social media handle. “You are not here by mistake,” he told the mass of people in Lisbon’s…
An Irish-born priest who risked his life to defy white supremacists in the United States and set-up a community where vulnerable children were educated together regardless of skin colour, could soon take a step closer to sainthood. Ballymoe-born Fr Edward J. Flanagan, who died in 1948, established the renowned Boys Town educational facility as an…
In George Orwell’s masterful novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four – which I read every summer, and eerily seems more prescient each and every year, ‘doublethink’ and ‘newspeak’ are used to describe how the establishment uses intentionally ambiguous speech to distort and obscure reality. It came to mind as I watched the hearings of the Oireachtas committee on…