FATHER FIGURES

The Evangelist’s interview series returns with Father Kenneth Doyle, who talks about his time running the diocesan newspaper, flights with St. John Paul II and the Parish of Mater Christi.

Father Kenneth Doyle is well-known across the Diocese of Albany and beyond. Father Doyle grew up in Troy, graduated from Catholic Central High School and attended Mater Christi Seminary. Father Doyle was ordained to the priesthood on May 28, 1966 and soon after began a long association with The Evangelist, working there as assistant editor and editor from 1967-81. Father Doyle, who received a law degree from Albany Law School in 1978, also spent three years in Rome as the bureau chief for Catholic News Service from 1981-84, and still writes a column that is distributed nationally every week. In 1992, he became pastor of the Parish of Mater Christi in Albany and stayed there until 2016. Mike Matvey of The Evangelist talks with Father Doyle about his time at The Evangelist, flying around the world with St. John Paul II and when he was happiest as a priest in this latest installment of the Father Figures interview series.

TE: What drew you to the priesthood?

FD: I can pinpoint it. My junior year in high school we had a retreat and it was Archbishop Joseph Ryan, who later became the archbishop up in Anchorage, Ak., and he gave the retreat; he was a priest of the diocese then. And I remember during the retreat I started thinking — I had wanted to be a doctor or lawyer, some way that I could help people — and it occurred to me during that retreat that the way I could help people the most and the longest was to help them get to heaven. And that’s when I started thinking about being a priest. That was in 11th grade.

TE: How did you end up working for and finally becoming editor of The Evangelist?

FD: When I was in the seminary at Catholic U, you, of course, majored in theology but you could minor in a different field and I minored in English and English Literature. I have always liked that and I have always liked writing. A year after I was ordained, I got called in by Bishop (Edward) Maginn and he asked me if I would be willing to come as assistant editor of The Evangelist.

TE: What do you remember most about your time at The Evangelist?

FD: The pivotal point, I thought, in the history of The Evangelist came when we went full coverage. It had been purely a voluntary subscription for many years and then in the late ’60s, Bishop (Edwin) Broderick decided that it should go to every family in the Diocese. So we immediately jumped from 30 to 40,000 to over 100,000 circulation. It had much more impact.

TE: Why did you want to get a law degree?

FD: This was 10 years after I was ordained. I was editing The Evangelist and we were doing things at the time about the death penalty. And it occurred to me that if I went to law school and got that background I could help even more on issues like that at The Evangelist; helping with issues of social justice.

TE: How did you become the bureau chief for Catholic News Service in Rome?

FD: I got a call out of the blue from Washington, from the United States Catholic Conference, the bishops’ conference, saying that they had considered some names and the bureau chief was leaving over in Rome and would I be interested in going to Rome? And I said, “Of course, not.” I was editing The Evangelist, I had finished law school and we had just started a pro bono group of Catholic lawyers to help people who couldn’t afford an attorney and I was involved in all of that and I had no desire to pick up and move to Rome. So they called back a couple of weeks later and said, “Look, we really would like you to go. Would you consider going for a year and, in the meanwhile, we will try to recruit somebody else if you would take this for a year.” So I said, “Yeah, I will go for a year.” And then at the end of the year, they said, “Would you consider signing up for two more years?” And so I did and I stayed a little over three years in Rome.

TE: What were your memorable experiences in Rome?

FD: I would travel with Pope John Paul on his plane when he would go on foreign trips. And he would spend part of the airtime with the journalists, walking up and down the aisle, and you could ask him a question. There were about 10 English-speaking journalists — from the Associated Press, UPI, the Times — and we would organize our questions so that we would cover everything that we wanted to ask him. And the interesting thing to me was, you could ask him a question in any one of seven or eight languages and he would respond in that language. And I remember coming back from England in 1982, I said to him, “When do you think we can expect full reunion with the Anglican Church? Is it reasonable to think in terms of the year 2000? Because the Archbishop of Canterbury said that was the target that he had in mind.” And the Pope just looked at me and he smiled and kind of winked and he said, “I share in the prophetic mission of Christ, but I am not a prophet.” And then he laughed. And English was his seventh or eighth best language and he could play on words like that in that language.

TE: Talk about your time at the Parish of Mater Christi?

FD: I have had a lot of very good experiences in the priesthood, but any priest I think who’s a diocesan priest eventually wants to get back in a parish because the other stuff is exciting — traveling with the Pope, being the media director for the bishops’ conference and all of that — but why you started out to be a priest is to help people in a parish. And I was delighted to get back into a parish in 1992. The happiest I have ever been in my priesthood was all of my years at Mater Christi, working with people because that is why you did it to start with.

TE: Do you have a favorite Bible passage?

FD: I like the passage that says, “Come to me all you who labor and are heavily burdened, I will refresh you.” (Matthew 11:28). I try to find that refreshment and enliven my spirit through quiet time, kind of conversing with the Lord.

TE: What advice would you give to someone who was thinking about becoming a priest?

FD: It’s a difficult time in the Church because of the sex abuse crisis. But I think people still love their priest and feel close to their priest. And I think there is so much good that you can do in the priesthood in a parish. And people want to feel close to their priest and I think it’s a challenging time to be a priest but it is also a very satisfying time too.