The Drimnagh boy who grew up to be the most powerful man in the Catholic Church

Extra.ie​

27-04-2025

As the bespectacled, crimson-robed cleric led the procession bringing Pope Francis up the aisle of St Peter's Basilica for one final time this week, many wondered how this 77-year-old, largely unknown Irishman suddenly found himself at the apex of the Catholic Church's ruling hierarchy.
Cardinal Kevin Farrell is now the most powerful man in the Catholic Church, his role as camerlengo – the person who runs the Vatican following the death of the pope – is pivotal as he takes charge of the conclave of cardinals who, in the coming days, will choose the next pontiff.
But absent from the mourners in Rome was the boy who sat beside a youthful Cardinal Farrell as they made their way to school together more than six decades ago on the number 58 bus in Dublin in the 1950s and '60s. Pic: TIZIANA FABI/AFP via Getty Images)
Alan Whelan and Kevin Farrell lived just a three-minute walk from one another in the south Dublin suburb of Drimnagh. Separated in age by just six months, they journeyed together each morning until they reached the age of 13 or 14. And then the pair, who spent Saturday afternoons enjoying high-action westerns and the wild adventures of cowboy Roy Rogers at the local youth club, went their separate ways.
Alan went on to become a school principal, while the fate of the bookish boy, who did not play sport, was sealed after he went into Clerys department store on O'Connell Street with his parents.
The cardinal's childhood friend recalls: 'We got the 58 bus down to Cork Street… He would go one way and I would go the other.
'He got off at St Teresa's school on Donore Avenue, and I went in the other direction to St James's Street [CBS] school. In those days, we did what was called our Primary Cert, and that decided in a way whether we continued, if our parents could pay for it. It wasn't a great deal of money to continue, but it still was a sacrifice.
'About 10% of us went on to secondary education and the rest would have left school around 14. 'I cannot say I can remember him leaving to join the priesthood at 14 with any firmness. I only remember descriptions my parents gave, and they said: 'He went into Clerys as a young boy, and he came out as a young priest.' Pic: Simone Risoluti – Vatican Media via'They were describing getting the cassock, a soutane and so on, and that particular order [the Legionaries of Christ] was very big on wearing hats. They were posh. That's the word my mother used to use about the order. It would have been a round hat, very much in the Italian tradition.'
Back then, Clerys was where members of the clergy and aspiring members of the religious orders went to be fitted out for the clothes that would set them apart from others.
The day the young Kevin Farrell went through the doors of Clerys would have been a momentous day for him and his family. By then, his older brother Brian had already joined the South American-based Legionaries of Christ order.
Even though many young men joined the priesthood at the time, it was still a little out of the ordinary for two brothers just barely out of their childhood to leave their families and homes to become priests.
Years later – before the Legionaries of Christ became embroiled in a sex abuse scandal involving its founder, Father Marcial Maciel – the future cardinal's older brother was talked about at one stage as a possible secretary-general of the order. Pic: Vatican Media viaDespite beginning their clerical careers with the disgraced order, the two Dublin brothers were later appointed bishops. And their progress was meteoric. After leaving a post at a university in Mexico, the future Cardinal Kevin Farrell went to Washington, D.C., in the United States, where he worked as an adviser to the then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
However, the senior American cleric also became embroiled in a sex abuse scandal involving adults and children. Cardinal McCarrick was laicised – removed from the Church – in 2019 after an internal Church investigation.
Following his stint in Washington DC, Kevin Farrell was appointed Bishop of Dallas. He was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2016.
Three years later, he was given the title 'Camerlengo', or the person who runs the Vatican after the death or resignation of a pope. Pope Francis nominated the cardinal for the job in 2019.
Cardinal Farrell will remain in the position during the 'Apostolica Sedes Vacans', the period between the death or resignation of a pope and the election of the next pontiff. Pic: VINCENZO PINTO/AFP via Getty Images
Cardinal Farrell has even been named in international media reports as a potential outside bet to become the next pope. Technically, a camerlengo can become pope, as has happened twice in history: Gioacchino Pecci (Pope Leo XIII) in 1878 and Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) in 1939.
Years after naming him as camerlengo, in 2023, Francis chose Cardinal Farrell as president of the Supreme Court of Vatican City State. He was also named president of the Commission for Confidential Matters.
As camerlengo, Cardinal Farrell will be tasked with making arrangements for the conclave. The highly secretive process by which the next pontiff is selected was depicted in last year's hit film of the same name starring Ralph Fiennes, who played the role of camerlengo.
But according to Cardinal Farrell's childhood friend, Fiennes' fictional character and the real-life boy who grew up around the corner from him in Dublin have little in common.
Alan Whelan told Extra.ie: 'The last time we spoke, it was at the World Meeting of Families in 2018 in the RDS in Dublin. 'I joked with him about a postcard I had sent as a nine- or ten-year-old to his family when I was on holiday. Pic: Liam McBurney / POOL / AFP)LIAM MCBURNEY/AFP/Getty Images
'I knew they were a republican family and I had written at the bottom of the address, 'the Irish Free State'.
'He could remember, and we were immediately in that sort of chatter… the years didn't matter. He certainly hasn't forgotten where he has come from.
'And when I saw him in the procession on Wednesday, leading the procession to St Peter's Basilica, he was the main person. When he spoke Latin, you could hear his Dublin accent.
'I was taken aback by that. I thought, 'he hasn't lost his roots', and it reaffirmed for me that he is an Irish cardinal at the heart of what is happening.'
However, others hold a different view of the 'humble man from Dublin' who advanced through the ranks to the highest echelons of the Catholic Church. These include the renowned filmmaker and investigative journalist Jason Berry, who exposed sex abuse scandals involving the clergy in America. Pic: Vatican Media viaAsked this weekend about Cardinal Farrell, he told the Extra.ie: 'He is an enigma to be honest… He didn't leave many fingerprints.
'He left the Legionaries of Christ, and he became the Bishop of Dallas, Texas, which had a convulsion of abuses there. I can't really tell you how well he did there. I'm not implying he is a failure. He is one of these people who have travelled up the ranks of the hierarchy without leaving many traces.'
Mr Berry added: 'A man who came out of a cult like the Legionaries of Christ – that's what it was, in my opinion – he got out and managed to rebrand his career. There has to be something said for him to get so close to Pope Francis.'
David Clohessy of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) support group in the US accused Cardinal Farrell of not doing enough to protect children from predatory sex abusing priests.
The group cited the Irish-born cardinal in a formal complaint lodged with the Vatican last month. Mr Clohessy told the Extra.ie: 'For decades, Farrell has held a number of posts in the Catholic hierarchy.
In none of those roles has he done anything but the bare minimum to protect kids, expose predators and help victims.
'Farrell's close affiliation with the now-defrocked Cardinal Ted [Theodore] McCarrick, who both committed and concealed, and Farrell's refusal to come clean about what he knew and did about abuse reports against McCarrick is worrisome in and of itself.'
In 2018, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, then head of the Vatican office for laity and family, insisted he was 'shocked' when he heard allegations of years of sexual abuse and harassment by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the man who ordained him a bishop and whom he served as an auxiliary bishop for six years.
'I was shocked, overwhelmed; I never heard any of this before in the six years I was there with him,' he told Catholic News Service at the time.