Michael Kelly is an award-winning writer and broadcaster specialising in religious and social affairs. Born and raised in Northern Ireland, he attended the Pontifical University St Patrick’s College, Maynooth where he obtained degrees in philosophy and theology and the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome where he studies social institutional communications.
From 2002-2005 he was an Editor in the Central Information Service of Vatican Radio. In this role, he travelled with Pope St John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI on an overseas trip.
In 2005 he returned to Dublin to take up the position of Deputy Editor with The Irish Catholic newspaper, succeeding as Editor in 2012. In 2016, he was appointed Consulting Editor of Columba Books, the Dublin-based publisher of religious and spiritual books.
He is a regular contributor to programmes on RTÉ, BBC, UTV, CNN and Al Jazeera. He also has extensive experience offering media training and coaching in the voluntary sector. Mr Kelly is a weekly columnist with Ireland’s best-selling daily newspaper the Irish Independent and has been published in The Irish Times, the Irish Examiner, The Irish News, The Guardian, Our Sunday Visitor, Catholic World Report, the National Catholic Reporter and the National Catholic Register. He writes from Ireland for the Catholic News Service of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and is a contributor to Vatican Radio.
He is a co-author with Austen Ivereigh of the best-selling book How to Defend the Faith Without Raising Your Voice. He is a frequent visitor to the Holy Land and is currently working on a new book on the persecution of minority Christian communities which is due to be published in Autumn 2019 and another on the holy places in the Holy Land which is due to be published in Spring 2020.
