'A MAN OF GREAT SKILL AND TALENT'

Father Kenneth J. Doyle, a longtime editor of The Evangelist and pastor of Mater Christi Parish, died on Oct. 28. He was 82.

“Father Ken served the people of our Diocese and the Albany community in many ways throughout his productive life, a man of great skill and talent,” said Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger. “For most, however, he will be remembered as a pastor, with a kindly heart. We pray in thanksgiving for his life and ministry and for his eternal rest in the Lord.”

Father Doyle was well known across the Diocese of Albany and beyond. He grew up in Troy, graduated from Catholic Central High School in 1957, attended Mater Christi Seminary and received his degree in theology from Catholic University. Father Doyle was ordained to the priesthood on May 28, 1966, served as associate of Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Albany, and soon after began his 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 and was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1979, spent three years in Rome as the bureau chief for Catholic News Service from 1981-84. In 1984, he was public affairs officer for the U.S. Catholic Conference.

In 1992, he became pastor of St. Catherine of Siena which later became Mater Christi Church in Albany and retired in 2016. In 2000, he also began serving as Chancellor of Public Information for the Diocese of Albany. In retirement he kept writing his “Question Box” column for Catholic News Service. Even though he eventually retired from that role as well, those columns have still been running, even appearing in this week’s edition of The Evangelist.

In an interview with The Evangelist in December 2020, Father Doyle said while at Catholic University, he minored in English and English Literature because “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,” he said.

Soon after, Bishop Edwin Broderick, who was Bishop of Albany from 1969-76, decided that The Evangelist, which was a voluntary subscription for years, 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,” said Father Doyle, who 10 years after he was ordained went to law school to communicate more effectively on issues such as the death penalty.

In the early 1980s, he got a call from the United State Catholic Conference asking him if he would be interested in going to Rome and working as the bureau chief for Catholic News Service. After turning the job down at first, Father Doyle accepted on the condition that he would do it for one year.

“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,” he said.

This began a period of much travel with Pope John Paul II on his numerous foreign trips.

“(Pope John Paul II) 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,” Father Doyle told the Evangelist. “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.”

When Father Doyle was being interviewed for The Evangelist he brought along a picture — a prized memory — in which he is asking Pope John Paul II, a question midflight during one of those foreign trips. 

Despite his trips around the world, Father Doyle longed to be pastor and that finally happened in 1992.

“I have had a lot of very good experiences in the priesthood, but any priest I think who is 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,” Father Doyle told The Evangelist. “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.”

Father Doyle was also sacramental minister for St. Thomas the Apostle in Cherry Valley, St. John’s/St. Joseph’s in Rensselaer and St. Mary’s in Clinton Heights.

In addition to his parents, W. Kenneth and Sallie Shea Doyle of Troy, Father Doyle is predeceased by his sister Sally Marie Doyle and brother-in-law Robert G. Sochor. He is survived by his sister Mary Ellen Doyle Sochor, his nephew Kenneth J. Sochor (Brooks), his niece Paula Marie Sochor (Mickie), and numerous beloved cousins and friends.

The Rite of Reception of the Body will be celebrated in the Parish of Mater Christi on Nov. 4 at 3 p.m. Visitation will then continue until 7 p.m. Please enter the church from the parking lot entrance. Father Doyle’s Funeral Mass will be concelebrated at the Parish of Mater Christi on Nov.  5  at 10 a.m. The Mass can be viewed at www.youtube.com/c/parishofmaterchristi.

The Rite of Committal will be held at St. Peter’s Cemetery in Troy, immediately following the Funeral Mass. Donations can be made in Father Doyle’s memory to the Reverend Kenneth J. Doyle Retired Priests’ Fund at The Foundation of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany. 40 N. Main Ave., Albany, N.Y. 12203.