Fr Joe McKeever was a great priest, friend and brother

Friends and family of the popular Armagh priest tell Ruadhán Jones about Fr McKeever’s remarkable character

There’s one thing that everyone who met him agrees on; Fr Joe McKeever was a remarkable man and a great character. Colm O’Farrell, a pupil and later close friend of Fr McKeever, says that “if you’d have been with him for five minutes, he’d probably have had you crying laughing”.

”He would have had you in fits, he was the most dangerous man to sit in a quiet room with because you would never know what he would have come out with next. And he would have said it for badness for a reaction and a laugh – you’d be sitting looking at the floor saying I can’t believe you just said that,” Colm tells The Irish Catholic.

“Just incredible is all I can say, I don’t have words to explain how incredible he was,” says Brendan McCann, another close friend of Fr McKeever through the Catholic men’s group, the Knights of Columbanus.

“He was super, super intelligent and he could read a room very well. He knew who to poke fun at, and I say that in the nicest possible way. He would have worked out your weaknesses very quick! Myself and Joe were best of buddies. But I would have gone to his house for two hours and we would have fought for two hours. Then, whenever I left, he would say, ‘I really enjoyed that, don’t be long ‘til you’re back’.”

Fr Joe McKeever

Fr Joe McKeever died of Covid-19 on 23 January 2021, just shy of 70 years old. He was a latecomer to the priesthood, discovering his vocation in his 30s and being ordained in his 40s. But he had always been an active and committed Catholic, heavily involved in the Knights of Columbanus. He was in the midst of a meteoric rise through the Knights’ ranks when he determined to enter the seminary.

“Joe would have been in the order over 30 years and he rose to what we would call deputy Supreme Knight, which is essentially second in command,” Brendan McCann explains. “He was 37 at that stage which was unheard of either before or since. Generally speaking if you’re deputy Supreme Knight, you’re as close to 60 that it makes no difference. But he was only 37, 20 years below that. And it was then that he said he wanted to go into seminary. He was such a high achiever and no doubt would have been number one in the order in his forties.”

Fr McKeever had a great love of the fraternity and later became Supreme Chaplain to the order. But he had gravitated towards the priesthood for some time, explains Collette McKeever, Fr McKeever’s sister.

“He toyed with that for many years,” Collette McKeever says. “Definitely he had talked about it and talked to his parents about it and then put it on the back-burner for a while and then obviously it was something he couldn’t shake off. He led a good lay person’s life before that and was a teacher for about 14-15 years.”

Brendan McCann tells the story of what finally confirmed to Joe that the priesthood was for him: “A friend of mine was in the seminary for four years and he took a bit of a sabbatical out of it. Fr Joe was his schoolteacher and mentor and Fr Joe – he was Joe at this stage – he called him up saying, you know, could I help you spiritually, give you some guidance about going forward.

A naturally gregarious man, he loved to meet people and work in the parish”

“So these two guys engaged in summer walking and they would have walked for four or five miles talking about the seminary and what it was, the sacrifice and stuff like that. This was over a summer period and at the end of the summer the guy says to Joe – look, this isn’t for me and at the end of the summer Joe said, you know what, I’m going to join! He kind of talked himself into it.”

Once he began his priestly ministry, Fr McKeever was in his element. A naturally gregarious man, he loved to meet people and work in the parish. He worked in three parishes during his career; Dundalk, Dungannon and Crossmaglen. He was very sensitive to the needs of others, Collette McKeever explains.

“He was sharp, witty and enjoyed a good debate or an argument, liked to wind you up and get your opinion out of you whether you liked to give it or not,” she says. “He did seem to have good means of communicating with people from all walks of life, all past pupils and things, who he would have been sarcastic to – they thought the world of him and in his own way, he thought the whole world of them, they really respected him. He did seem to cross a whole lot of different divides.”

Colm O’Farrell also remembers Fr McKeever as being “a great man for advice, great spiritual advice, explaining theological things in a way that made sense”.

“Joe was great craic in one minute, but if you said you needed to talk to him about something, it would’ve been come with me, into a room, close the door and you could have poured your heart out to him,” he says. “I always found that whatever advice I got from him was 100% and that’s a big thing. He understood society, he understood the way of the world and he was able to relate very, very well to people who had problems. But very well respected in Crossmaglen.“

Fr McKeever’s friends and family held an online rosary and gathering in his honour. It was intended to be a small one held for locals who knew him – but it attracted attention from all across the island of Ireland, and from Britain.

“We had about 90 people turn up which was quite high,” Brendan McCann says. “We had dignitaries from across the water. We had the supreme knight of the Knights of Columba, his deputy and the president of the International Alliance of Catholic Knights. They all knew Joe over the years and they all turned up for his rosary. It’s testimony that those big hitters from across the waves turned up for that event.”

A battle

In his later years, Fr McKeever had to overcome a battle with cancer which his sister believes left him vulnerable and “shattered his confidence”. Colm O’Farrell also noticed a loneliness that came into his life after Fr McKeever retired from the parish.

“He loved the parish so much and once you’re taken out of that life where you’re meeting people every day, saying Mass every day – to all of a sudden find yourself sitting at home, that’s a massive shock to the system. But the fact that he was asked to come back and be the Supreme Chaplain to the order for the third time, just really lifted his spirits unbelievably,” Colm says. “Joe had a love for the order because he could see the good that came out of the order. He will be sorely, sorely missed by us and myself in particular.”