Writer
Michael Kelly
Father Michael Kelly is an Australian Jesuit who directed the Catholic Church's news feature and commentary service, UCA News, 2008-2018. He is the publisher of the English editions of La Croix International and La Civilta Cattolica, the 170 year old Jesuit publication of the Italian Jesuits.
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MICHAEL KELLY. Time to think outside the square for the Church in China
Joseph Jiang’s timely essay on the Church in today’s China will annoy some but asks all the right questions. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL KELLY SJ. Six archbishops examined by Australian judge.
An extraordinary piece of evidence presented to the Commission is that up to 7% of Australian Catholic clergy have been child abusers. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL KELLY SJ. 2017 for Pope Francis: what to expect.
At the heart of what Arrupe sought to do was get Jesuits out of their comfort zone, engaged with the real world and most especially reconverted to Jesus Christ by their encounter with the poor. Pope Francis would agree. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL KELLY SJ. Understanding challenges the church in Asia faces.
The Church in Asia can absorb and replicate its hierarchical, tiered cultural surrounds, or leave behind the clericalist conception of the Church, as a tightly run top-down organisation. It lies at the intersection of local hierarchical cultures and the culture of the church fostered by Rome before Vatican II. The calm confidence of Cardinal Oswald Continue reading »
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MICHAEL KELLY SJ. Winners are grinners – asylum seekers in Bangkok.
In the great race of life, it’s well to savor the few winners you back. Such was my experience last week. For some years, I’ve been helping a small group of asylum seekers survive against the odds in Bangkok. The win was a simple one as all the best wins are. After almost four Continue reading »
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MICHAEL KELLY S.J. Making saints.
In our dreary world full of incredible people making claims to leadership, finding the occasional hero or heroine can’t be a bad thing. So why begrudge the Catholic Church its idiosyncratic ways of creating people for believers to admire – the saints? Mother Teresa of Calcutta – that’s what it was called when she Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. Washing feet, culture and religion.
The decision by parts of the Catholic Church in India to differ with Pope Francis’ decision to allow women to have their feet washed in the ceremony on Holy Thursday is puzzling to say the least. Their reason given is simple. The inclusion of women in a ceremony where a man (the celebrant) washes the Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. Where to from here for the Catholic Church in Australia
Despite the unpersuasive Vatican spin on Cardinal Pell’s appearance last week before the Royal Commission into child sex abuse in institutions – that his performance was “dignified” and “edifying”, his performance, in the assessment of most observers including this one, was inept, cowardly and unconvincing. Cardinal Pell is only one Australian Catholic and he has Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. As Holy Mother Church has always taught.
At times I have to pinch myself to be alert to what’s going on right now in the Catholic Church and to fathom the depth of it. Throughout history, we have seen change come abruptly. It happened in Europe and Japan after WWII. And in Eastern Europe after the Berlin Wall came down when democracies Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. Treating Islam’s clerics like their Christian equivalents will save lives
There is an unexpected upside to the mayhem and carnage across the world, visited on the unsuspecting innocents of countries where Muslims are not a majority of the population – Europe and beyond. It’s something the Catholic Church has had to learn, too. And that is the simple fact that that misbehavior among religious adherents Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. Paris: the problem is deeper than criminal acts
There’s something profoundly rotten about cultures that can give birth to the murderous behaviour on show in Paris last Friday. This is just the latest and probably most visible instance because it happened in one of the hubs of the European and North American news media. These hubs make things that happen in too many Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. George Pell’s own goal.
A Catholic friend of mine who spent his professional life as a journalist at what was the then rather WASPISH Melbourne Age told me in the 1980s that two sports dominated that paper’s pages – Australian Rules football and Catholic fights. Cardinal George Pell should have stuck to playing Ozzie Rules. In that game, shirt Continue reading »
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Culture and Religion, Human Rights, Immigration, refugees, Politics, Religion and Faith, World Affairs
Michael Kelly SJ. The challenge of people movements.
Great as the gesture of Pope Francis is to mobilize parishes in Europe to accommodate the influx of tens of thousands of asylum seekers from the Middle East (they call them migrants), the problem is more complex than offering immediate support to needy people. The Pope knows that. He’s said so many times. The Pope Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. It can’t get any worse.
Current Affairs. There’s a special irony in the Australian Catholic bishops’ recent statement “Don’t Mess with Marriage” which is a defence of the institution against proposals to recognise gay marriage. What are they defending? It’s not just the Catholic sacrament of marriage that is their focus of attention. They are worried about marriage as proposed Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. Pope Francis and the Curia.
The tongues are certainly waging worldwide over the Christmas message of Pope Francis to staff at the Vatican – the priests, monsignors, bishops and cardinals gathered for an end of year assessment by the pope of the year that has passed. A few perfunctory words to round out a very busy year or a general Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. Phillip Hughes: reality bites
Seeing Australia from outside the island continent offers some very strange views from time to time. The outpouring of grief over the tragic accident that took the talented life of cricketer Phillip Hughes went global within a very short time. The home of cricket – England – was profuse in the time devoted to this Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. On being a Priest.
I’ve been a priest for thirty years and for perhaps the past two decades, I have known that when I walk into an unfamiliar setting or join a new group of people and tell them what I am, a goodly number are thinking to themselves: “What sort of a weird, psychologically deficient, sexually repressed and Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. A new magazine – Global Pulse.
Global Pulse Magazine brings together the rich editorial resources of some of the world’s leading independent publishers in the Catholic Church for an international English readership. Global Pulse provides insights into the Church and in the wider world of politics, religion, ethics, society and culture. Visit www.globalpulsemagazine.com In October, access is free so you can Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. Stopover in Hong Kong
John Le Carre (real name David Cornwall) has written a lot of books about the fairly predictable workings of spies. The Dirty Tricks manual doesn’t have a lot of chapters and you don’t have to be too smart to anticipate the moves and motives of different players. But they can make a thrilling read. Hong Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. Pope Francis is a game-changer.
There’s no doubting that Pope Francis is a game changer and not just for the Catholic Church. The question remains whether he can pull off the changes he’s foreshowed and many Catholics want. Three decades of people being made bishops more for reasons of their readiness to comply with directives from Head Office than for Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. Today’s Totalitarianism’s Powerful Forms.
Australian eyes are focused on the unspeakable brutality and pointlessness of the downing of MH 17. But alongside this event, Australian minds and hearts are assailed daily by barbarism across the Middle East and in different parts of Asia. It’s the paradox of liberalism that pluralistic secular democracies like Australia afford citizens far greater freedoms Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. Catholic Church needs to show more than legal compliance
It’s been a big few weeks for the clergy and their dealings with the police across the world. In legal matters in countries covering four continents – India, the Dominican Republic, Italy and Australia – clerics are being held to account by police and civil courts. Two priests in India have been charged with murdering Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. The banality of evil
Denial has many faces. Some of them are necessary. If any of us entertained what might befall us each day and the harm we could come to, we would never get out of bed. But denial also has corrosive and destructive effect if we deny the facts of our experience or refuse to be honest Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. A powerful minority or an elected majority!
In a process that shows no sign of ending soon, Thailand’s unstable governance has reached another crisis. The Acting Prime Minister has been tipped out only to be replaced by an Acting Acting Prime Minister who is himself to face judgment for his part in the failed scheme to stabilize the price of rice. These Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. Why Protestants are more popular than Catholics in China
Questions abound over the recent vicious actions of the Chinese government towards Christians in the prosperous Zhejiang Province just south of Shanghai. The actions of the government during the fortnight after Easter against both Protestants and Catholics are unprecedented in recent decades and, justifiably, have received world attention. As with all actions in a country Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. Next item on the Catholic reform agenda
This is a time of reform in the Church. Everyone who bothers to look, from average Catholics around the world to the cardinals who elected Jorge Mario Bergoglio to become Pope Francis, knows the Church is in strife and in need of a lot of work to render it an effective means to the end Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly S.J. What makes this week Holy.
The recent casual remark of a friend got me to thinking about just how people experience Easter differently. My friend and I were talking about something Christians are constantly encouraged to consider especially in Lent and which gets its highest profile in the Christian calendar on Good Friday: humility. The way I have come to Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. The canonisation of Popes John Paul II and John XXIII – an event of telling significance.
Pope Francis may need some help from Our Lady The Untier Of Knots On April 27, we will witness an event that will tell us more about what to make of Papa Francesco and what to expect in his papacy. He will canonize on the same day both Popes John Paul II and John XXII. Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. Where does the buck stop in the Church?
You could be forgiven for not knowing where the buck stops in the Catholic Church these days. In any society, organization or Church community, it is important to know who is ultimately responsible in decision making; otherwise, chaos or worse would prevail. In an unprecedented (for a cardinal) cross examination in court last week, Cardinal Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. Sexual abuse and the humiliation of the Catholic Church. A new spirituality.
Michael Kelly SJ invites Australian Catholics to embrace the humiliation that is bound to increase as the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse continues in 2014 through a spirituality based in the gospel. The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola invite us to pray for the gift of identification with Jesus in the abuse and derision he experienced Continue reading »