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An Irish priest has been appointed by Pope Francis to one of the most senior positions at the Vatican.
Msgr John Kennedy (53) is the new secretary of the disciplinary section at the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).
The office includes responsibility for dealing with credible allegations of clerical child sexual abuse submitted to the Vatican by Catholic bishops across the world. He had been serving at the office since being appointed there by Pope Francis in 2017.
His appointment is part of a major shake-up of the Vatican Curia being undertaken by Pope Francis, under which the CDF has two new sections: a doctrinal section and a disciplinary section. Italian priest Msgr Armando Matteo has been appointed secretary at the doctrinal section.
From Clontarf in Dublin, Msgr Kennedy was born on July 15th 1968 and ordained a priest on July 13th 1993 for the Dublin archdiocese. He worked in Crumlin and Francis Street parishes before undertaking postgraduate studies in Canon Law in Rome in 1998. He entered the service of the Holy See in September 2002 and began working with the CDF in 2003.
He began his service there under then CDF prefect cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.
In an interview with the Zenit website he described his reaction to hearing of the resignation of Benedict in February 2013: “You sometimes meet people who ask you: ‘Do you remember where you were on the day when JFK was shot, or the Twin Towers came down, or when World War II ended?’ I can think very clearly of exactly where I was.”
He was “in the north of Italy, and I was just ready to leave the hotel after a two-day ski trip, and my brother phoned and said: ‘What’s going on in Rome?’ I said: ‘I don’t really know. I’m not there.’ He said: ‘Switch on the TV as soon as you can, and you’ll see exactly what’s going on.’”
Benedict, who was 95 on April 19th last, is “a shy, but extremely intelligent man, a person who was very sincere, very gentle”, he said.