Fr Ray Kelly
Photo: RTE Luke Silke
Fr Ray Kelly reveals all in ‘raw and honest’ book
Christmas, for Fr Ray Kelly, is a very special time of year, which he always spends with family. When his parents died he would spend Christmas with his sister and her family, and now that she has died he spends it in his family home where her daughter lives.
“There was always great excitement when we were growing up, we loved Christmas and Santa Claus, you know at that time, you’d get up in the morning and have a look at what Santa brought, but you wouldn’t be allowed touch them at all until you went to morning Mass, you’d have one eye on the baby Jesus in the crib, while another eye was looking forward to getting home to play with the toys,” he tells The Irish Catholic.
Fr Ray Kelly is a parish priest in Oldcastle, Co Meath who gained fame, not least in 2014 when footage of him singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah went viral, but also when he auditioned for Britain’s Got Talent and got as far as the semi-finals.
He loves Christmas because he says that it’s “really the fulfilment of our Christian calling in the sense of the birth of Jesus, the Son of God, and the Christmas Mass is still very much part of most families’ tradition, now they mightn’t be church-going people for too many other Sundays in the year, but still whatever it is about Christmas they like to bring the children to Mass and see the crib, it’s still very special for a lot of people. Commercialism and shopping have kind of taken over but it’s still there, Mass and Faith is still on the list, I think”.
Illness
Fr Kelly has, this year, brought out a book: Father Ray Kelly Hallelujah – Memoirs of a Singing Priest. It chronicles, in a humble way, his rise to fame, from a rural Irish town, the midwife’s son come parish priest. Fr Kelly focuses on his childhood in Tyrellspass, Co Meath, in the 1950s, his first memory being that of the birth of his sister Mary Regina, to whom Kelly devotes a full chapter where he recounts her illness and death.
Fr Kelly has lived a fascinating life, and has many a yarn to tell – about how he travelled with his mother to Belfast for a job interview in the height of the Troubles or how, in his teenage years, a girl’s refusal to dance with him would shatter his confidence.
A recollection of how Pope John Paul II’s words in Ballybrit 1979 – “young people of Ireland, I love you” – touched his heart. Being told to kneel in front of the Sacred Heart for ten minutes was viewed, by the young Fr Kelly, as a form of punishment for laughing during the Rosary.
From the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1979 would stem the trail of events which lead Fr Kelly down the pathway towards religious life. The following meant he would commit himself to attending daily Mass before work, a habit which continued when the season of lent was over. A trip to Rome for a meeting of the Catholic Youth Council, Mass with the Pope and having been selected to sing Danny Boy for the Pontiff, and Fr Kelly was discerning, especially when he found himself back at work here at home, contemplating the experience.
First on the list of those to visit, upon his return from Rome was his 89-year-old grandmother. She passed away shortly after this visit, this affected him deeply.
The call to priesthood, for Fr Kelly, came suddenly, when one day, while queueing for Holy Communion, he saw himself dressed as a priest giving out Holy Communion. He turned and walked straight out of the church to his car. “I was 27 years of age, I had my own car, my own house with a mortgage; I was not giving all that up – no way!”
Revealing his thoughts to his friend and ending a relationship, and then seeking out which order he wished to join, would be the next difficult steps in his journey, he reflects, “as we drove over the cattle grid at the entrance to the cottage, the rattle of the tyres against the loose grid took me out of my questioning”.
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Fr Kelly entered seminary for the Kiltegan Fathers, and spent some time in Cork studying philosophy and then in Wicklow studying theology. Music remained part of his life throughout this period, and he used his talent to raise funds for African aid.
A few months in his final year working in a parish in the UK, and Kelly was appointed to new mission territory – Tzaneen. In June 1989 Fr Ray Kelly was ordained at home in Tyrellspass. Following his ordination, he was sent to South Africa for a time, before returning to bury his father. His only Christmas away from home was while he was working in South Africa.
Fr Kelly has many memories of Christmas, most notably discovering the truth about Santa Claus accidentally when he went to the local shop to collect items for his mother, and was informed by the staff there that he should tell his mother that they “managed to get everything she ordered except the guitar”.
Fr Kelly laughs at the thought, telling this paper that “the cat was out of the bag then and she had to sit me down for a talk!”
Having come home from the missions in August of 1991 Fr Kelly realised that he “needed time with my family to grieve over the loss of my dad and to heal. I needed to be assured my mum was okay after her illness and I needed time to catch up with my brother, my sisters and their children. I just needed time.”
Having spent time with his family, Fr Kelly met with his superiors who suggested that given how ‘turbulent’ the first 26 months of his priesthood had been, perhaps some work in Ireland. In the ensuing months Fr Kelly worked as an army chaplain in the Curragh camp in Kildare. In the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin where he met many other priests and was involved in fundraising initiatives and the All Priests Show.
This was followed by a spell of “missionary appeal work” in the US, work which largely involved preaching and the sharing of his personal testimony. He returned to Ireland after this and worked in “a 70% Protestant town in Northern Ireland in the height of the troubles”.
Fr Kelly remembers many stories from his time there – how parishioners were deliberately being held up at border checkpoints so they would be late for Mass. He says that he “couldn’t understand” the “coldness of sectarianism”.
Interest in his story was particularly strong from Germany and indeed a TV company offered to fly Fr Kelly to Cologne”
Referencing how he was constantly on the move while working for the Kiltegan Fathers, Fr Kelly approached his own diocese in search of some long term work. Working in Navan he immediately immersed himself in community life, getting involved in chaplaincy work in two local schools and the hospital and working with children with disabilities.
It was while working in Navan that he joined St Mary’s musical society, where he made history as the first priest to be involved on stage. His first show was Jesus Christ Superstar in 1994.
Having decided not to go back to missionary work, Fr Kelly successfully applied to his superiors to leave Kiltegan Fathers and to be incardinated into Meath diocese in 1996. The bishop there at the time was Michael Smith. The move from Navan parish to a small parish outside Tullamore was difficult for Fr Kelly. His mother’s dog “had to lick the tears from my face” when he visited on his way to this new venture.
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Fr Kelly’s singing in churches came to fruition when he was gifted equipment by his former parishioners. The following Sunday he sang Panis Angelicus. On a trip to Fatima some years later he was called home as his mother’s health had deteriorated. He was unable to say the rosary by her bedside as he couldn’t stop crying. He cried even when writing these words in his book, 15 years later.
Fr Kelly’s story, which of the famous singing priest, is a story of survival, a raw and honest story of a life that was at many times difficult. Fr Kelly returned from abroad to funerals of close loved ones three times over the course of his journey in religious life. This book does not serve as an advertisement for vocations to religious life, but rather a blunt description in his own words, of the ups and downs he has experienced while fulfilling his vocation.
Fr Kelly says that the work he does musically is “almost like a ministry in and of itself”, although he never views it as work “because it’s a hobby to me really”.
Fr Kelly is a natural story-teller, with a phenomenal memory and great attention to detail”
The couple, at whose wedding Fr Kelly sang ‘Hallelujah’, to whom he owes his fame, are still in touch with him from time to time. Fr Kelly says that they reached out to him when he was partaking in Britain’s Got Talent a few years ago.
This video gained over 68 million internet hits, and Fr Kelly suddenly found himself a celebrity with multiple media debuts in the days that followed. Interest in the story was particularly strong from Germany and indeed a TV company offered to fly Fr Kelly to Cologne.
An invitation to take part in an audition for Britain’s Got Talent was robustly turned down my Fr Kelly who says “it was much easier to watch it from the comfort of my own home with a beer in hand”. Following phone calls and persistence on the part of the producers, he eventually agreed to take part.
Fr Kelly received numerous pieces of correspondence from members of the public in the aftermath of his TV appearances. Among these is one striking email from someone who felt that “death was the only option and had even written a suicide note”, but stumbled across Fr Kelly’s YouTube video and “literally felt the grace of God wash over me”. The email concludes with the words “God placed you on that stage for a reason”.
Fr Kelly is a natural story-teller, with a phenomenal memory and great attention to detail, even in conversation with this newspaper he relayed how “Ester my housekeeper came running when I came home, I thought there was an emergency in the parochial house, to tell me that the first copy of the book had arrived”.
Catholic youth ministry is something which played a huge part in Fr Kelly’s Faith journey, and he’s now a chaplain in local schools, a role which he feels is very important. One of these schools is dealing with the aftermath of a student suicide, and this, Kelly says, is a “sore point, but students have their own way of dealing with grief”.
He says that while he would like to see more students coming to church and realising that prayer could help them in life, he feels that God’s message would be more likely to reach them if it came from well-known sports people, “but we are seeing that a lot nowadays so I think it’s a good thing”.
Fr Kelly has dedicated the book to his mother, citing how he never intended to write a book about his life, but always wished to write one about his mother Mona, a midwife, “what she went through, bringing new life to so many families; the hardships, the primitive conditions she and expectant mothers had to endure to give new life”.
Fr Ray Kelly’s story is not just about him, but the stories of the people who shaped him, the vivid details of a journey; the fulfilling of a vocation. Fr Kelly tells his story honestly, vividly, with sadness and with humour.
There are a lot of life lessons that could be gleaned from his life, and most importantly, Fr Kelly gives his version of events, the background to the man you see on stage, and what a fascinating and rich background that is.
Father Ray Kelly Hallelujah – Memoirs of a Singing Priest can be found here