When Alan Whelan met his childhood friend Cardinal Kevin Farrell in Dublin in 2018, he says his pal was his “old self” – kind, caring and a bit of a “teaser”.
While much of the country was in awe of Pope Francis’s visit to Ireland that year, Farrell – travelling as part of the papal entourage – and Whelan reminisced about their formative years in Drimnagh, the working-class area on the southside of the city.
Whelan is “not the least bit surprised” that the Dublin-born Cardinal Farrell has risen through the ranks of the Catholic Church to become effectively the caretaker of the Vatican until a new pope is chosen in the coming weeks.
“There’s no reason why somebody from a very humble church background wouldn’t rise to the top and that’s what we’ve seen with Kevin and his brother – it’s wonderful,” says Whelan, referring to the cardinal’s older sibling, Bishop Brian Farrell (81).
The younger Farrell (77) is, without doubt, the most visible Irishman worldwide these days – the full glare of the media spotlight is on the Vatican in the wake of Francis’s death on Easter Monday morning as the cardinals gather to bury the pontiff on Saturday and elect a new pope in the coming weeks.
[ Who will be the next pope after Francis and how does the process work?Opens in new window ]
As camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church – a role he has held since 2019 – it fell to Farrell to announce the pope’s death, to destroy his “Ring of the Fisherman”, to oversee the funeral arrangements and, from Monday last, to take responsibility for running the Vatican City state until the new pope is voted in next month.
This week, those living near Farrell’s childhood home in Galtymore Park in Drimnagh recalled a strongly republican family that emitted a “clerical elegance”, a family that was kind, charitable and “humble”.
Whelan describes the cardinal as “caring, even as a child,” and simply a “good all-rounder”.
Living nearby, the pair would be “in and out” of one another’s homes playing as children. They were also altar servers together in the local church, Whelan recalls. He remembers Farrell as someone with a sense of humour.
“He teased his brother that he became a bishop before him,” he says, laughing, describing an “amusing rivalry” between Cardinal Farrell and his brother.
“I don’t think either of them were ambitious in any sort of way, they’re quite humble lads.”
Despite decades away from Ireland, Farrell remained largely unchanged when Whelan met him in 2018 during World Meeting of Families – the reason for Pope Francis’s visit that year.
His Dublin accent was still as evident then, seven years ago, as it was this week in Rome.
“I listened to the service on Wednesday morning and you could hear his Dublin accent underneath,” Whelan says, laughing.
For Farrell, it is a long way and a somewhat circuitous route from the Christian Brothers in Drimnagh to the higher ranks of the Vatican.
[ Farrell brothers: The two most senior Irish clerics in the VaticanOpens in new window ]
His brother had a more direct ascent: he served at the Holy See Secretariat of State from 1981 to 2002 when he was appointed secretary of the Vatican’s Council for Promoting Christian Unity. He retired from that role in February 2024.
Both brothers joined the conservative Legionaries of Christ out of school in Dublin and were ordained following study at Salamanca in Spain and in Rome.
Brian was ordained in 1969 and Kevin in 1978. The younger brother served as a chaplain at the University of Monterrey in Mexico. Neither ever served in Ireland.
In 1981 Kevin left the Legionaries of Christ and became a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington DC. In 2001 he was appointed an auxiliary bishop there.
He was “known in Washington DC as priest Number 39,” he recalled of his time there in an interview with The Irish Times in 2017. “I was the 39th Irish-born priest in the archdiocese of Washington. Today, unfortunately, I’m number five.”
In 2007 he was appointed Bishop of Dallas and served there until 2016.
In November 2013 he read the opening prayer at a 50th anniversary ceremony to mark the assassination of President John F Kennedy in Dealey Plaza, just yards from there, his distinctive Dublin accent ringing around the plaza’s infamous buildings.
It was the first time that Dallas had officially marked an anniversary of his death, reflecting the shame the city felt for so long.
“I could never have imagined it, never in my wildest dreams that I would be standing on the grassy knoll delivering that invocation,” he told The Irish Times then.
He credited Kennedy with inspiring him to lead a life serving others and recalled his shock at hearing of the president’s murder as a 16-year-old while attending a youth meeting at the Our Lady of Good Counsel church in Drimnagh.
In 2016 Pope Francis appointed Farrell – by then a naturalised US citizen – prefect of the Dicastery for Laity and Family Life – a key role for overseeing the Argentinian pontiff’s reforms. The pope also named him a cardinal that year.
His status in the Vatican continued to grow. Three years later he was named camerlengo. Last year Pope Francis appointed him president of the Vatican’s Supreme Court and director of the Holy See’s pension fund.
Francis clearly thought highly of him, particularly in money matters, as he appointed Farrell president of the newly created Vatican Commission for Confidential Matters in 2020, dealing with legal, economic or financial matters, which requires strict confidentiality, according to its constitution.
In 2022 Francis made him chair of the Vatican Committee for Investments, a role that its constitution states must ensure the Vatican’s investments align with the church’s social doctrine while monitoring “their profitability, propriety and degree of risk”.
Two years previously Farrell himself was embroiled in an ethical issue when it emerged he had spent €29,000, a gift from an American bishop, on refurbishing his Rome apartment. It subsequently emerged that the money had come from the relevant US diocese’s accounts and not those of the bishop concerned. The bishop was removed from office and Farrell returned the €29,000 to the diocese’s accounts.
That was not the only glitch is his ascension to high office at the Vatican.
While serving in Washington he shared a four-bedroom apartment with then Archbishop of Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and two priest secretaries. McCarrick was archbishop from 2001. Following a torrent of abuse allegations against McCarrick, Francis accepted his resignation as cardinal in 2018. In 2019 McCarrick was the most senior churchman of modern times to be laicised.
Cardinal Farrell has denied having any knowledge of any of McCarrick’s abuse.
“I was shocked, overwhelmed; I never heard any of this before in the six years I was there with him,” the Dublin-born cleric said of his former boss.
The Legionaries of Christ, to which Farrell had belonged until 1981, was itself caught up an abuse scandal. The order’s founder Fr Marcial Maciel was removed from ministry by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006 over decades-long allegations of drug use and the sexual abuse of children and seminarians. It was even accepted that Maciel had fathered numerous children by various women.
Asked in 2016 by The Irish Times what he had known about Maciel’s activities, Farrell said: “I never knew anything back then. I worked in Monterrey, and maybe I would have met Maciel once or twice, but I never suspected anything.”
In 2018 the Vatican Dicastery, of which Farrell was prefect, banned former president Mary McAleese from taking part in a Vatican conference to mark International Women’s Day. It had been organised by the Voices of Faith group, which seeks to convince the Vatican that women “have the expertise, skills and gifts to play a full leadership role in the church”.
“Ironically, a conference dedicated to women in the church was not to be allowed to have women who were prepared to speak about women in the church,” McAleese later said.
Later in 2018, Farrell was lead organiser of the World Meeting of Families that brought Francis to Dublin and the country its first papal visit in 39 years.
Seven years later, it is the cardinal’s proximity to the papacy once again that has seen him take centre stage in the Vatican as camerlengo, a Latin title which means “chamberlain” or “attendant to the sovereign’s chamber”.
Pope Francis put him in the position he’s in now and he wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t think he was a great man
— Mary Lambe (79)
In that role, he will be tasked with putting in place the practical arrangements for the conclave, ensuring its confidentially and ordering voting.
In Drimnagh, pride for the standing he has achieved is palpable.
“I couldn’t believe it,” said Mary Keogh, a 96-year-old resident of Galtymore Park, of seeing a local boy carrying out his duties as the church’s most powerful figure.
“I’m watching more television than I’ve ever done because you’re afraid to miss something.”
Keogh has fond memories of his mother Molly, known affectionately as “Moll,” an ardent volunteer in the local community.
“I can still see her,” says Keogh. “You’d always see her coming for Mass.”
She recalls a close-knit community in which “everyone was raising everyone’s children,” describing Moll as “kind and gentle.”
Although just two camerlengos have been elected pope in history, those in Drimnagh cannot help but imagine their man getting the top job in the Vatican.
Mary Lambe, who lives in her childhood home just three doors down from where the cardinal grew up, still has photos of her as a child sitting beside the Farrell brothers at a birthday party in a back garden on Galtymore Road.
She recalls her “fun” childhood friend, a boy who was “in the middle of everything.”
“We were always playing – he was lovely, all of the Farrells were,” she says.
She has “great faith” in her old friend.
“Pope Francis put him in the position he’s in now and he wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t think he was a great man,” said the 79-year-old Lambe.
“Wouldn’t it be great if he got voted in? They’d have to peel me off the ceiling.”
