Dublin-born Irish-American cardinal Kevin Farrell will run the Vatican until a new pope is elected.
Cardinal Farrell (77) was born in Drimnagh and has spent most of his clerical life in the United States. He is the most senior Irish man at the Vatican.
Cardinal Farrell was educated by the Christian Brothers, as was his older brother, Bishop Brian Farrell, but neither man served as a priest in Ireland.
Brian Farrell started working at the Vatican in 1981 and served as secretary to the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity until his retirement last year.
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Dublin-born Irish–American cardinal Kevin Farrell to run Vatican until pope elected
Cardinal Farrell joined the Legionaries of Christ in 1966. He studied theology at the University of Salamanca in Spain, the Gregorian University and the Angelicum in Rome. He also studied business and administration at the University of Notre Dame in the US.
He was ordained in 1978 and served as chaplain at the Catholic University of Monterrey in Mexico. He was also general administrator of the Legionaries of Christ with responsibilities for seminaries and schools in Italy, Spain and Ireland.
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In 1984, he became a priest of the US archdiocese of Washington and in 1986 was appointed director of the Washington archdiocese’s Spanish Catholic Centre.
In December 2001, he was named auxiliary bishop of Washington, and in March 2007, was appointed the seventh bishop of the Catholic diocese of Dallas.
In November 2013, his Dublin accent was still evident when he read the opening prayer at the 50th anniversary ceremony to mark the assassination of US president John F Kennedy at Dealey Plaza in Dallas.
The ceremony was the first time since Kennedy was killed that Dallas officially marked an anniversary of his death, reflecting the shame the city felt for so long. Then Bishop Kevin Farrell was a member of the committee that organised a ceremony designed to openly acknowledge what happened in November 1963, and to try to move on.
Speaking to The Irish Times about that occasion, he recalled being a 16-year-old attending a youth meeting at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Drimnagh when he heard the news of Kennedy’s death.
“I could never have imagined it, never in my wildest dreams that I would be standing on the grassy knoll delivering that invocation. You think back to that cold Friday evening in November when you heard the news in Ireland and this was where it all happened, where the United States lost its innocence.”
He was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in November 2016.
Cardinal Farrell was the Vatican official responsible for co-ordinating efforts around the World Meeting of Families in Dublin in August 2018, which included a visit by Pope Francis.
That same year, the Vatican barred former president Mary McAleese from taking part in a conference in Italy to mark International Women’s Day. Her attendance was opposed by Cardinal Farrell, who had previously held the position of prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life.
Pope Francis in 2019 named Cardinal Farrell as camerlengo, the prelate who runs the Vatican between the death or resignation of a pontiff and the election of a new one.
The camerlengo cannot make any big decisions or change church teachings. When a pope dies, the camerlengo officially confirms the death, oversees the destruction of that pope’s papal ring and seals the papal residence and office.
The camerlengo is entrusted with orchestrating the funeral rites and overseeing preparations for the forthcoming conclave to elect a new pontiff.
