Are you one of the 91 million who got goosebumps watching the YouTube video of an Irish Catholic priest sing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in a perfect tenor voice to a young couple whose wedding he just performed?
That was Father Ray Kelly, a former missionary turned pastor of a parish in County Meath, who at 61 became an overnight viral sensation. Later, he went on to wow the usually scowling Simon Cowell on Britain’s Got Talent and record three albums. Oh, and competed with a professional dance partner on the British TV show, “Dancing with the Stars.” “I lasted up to the end,” he says, adding in his usual self-effacing way, “I broke the record for lowest score ever—a one out of 10 from one of the judges.”
The silken-voiced and good-humored Father Ray will be using his three-week holidays to tour the East Coast of the US, stopping in Philadelphia on October 19 for a charity concert celebrating the 85th birthday of Little Flower High School for Girls. There will be no dancing though, he says. After two knee and two back surgeries, he’s retired from the dance floor and semi-retired from his parish duties. “I’m physically a wreck,” he confesses.
This three-week singing jaunt across American is billed as his 10th Anniversary Tour—he first made headlines for his Hallelujah wedding ceremony performance in 2014. (And yes, he tweaked the Bible-inspired lyrics to fit that particular joyous occasion.)
While the path from writing sermons for Sunday Mass to dealing with TV appearances, interviews, concert perfomances, and record company deals was precipitous, Father Ray Kelly wasn’t totally unprepared. For one, he’d been singing and taking voice training classes since he was a child.
Growing up in Westmeath, “my family was very musical,” he explains over the phone from Ireland. “My brother and sister both played instruments. I didn’t play an instrument. I had the voice.”
And he had had some real world experience before he entered the priesthood at the ripe old age of 29. “After leaving certs, I had the opportunity to start working and once I got a few bob in my pocket, it’s what I wanted to do,” he says, laughing.
For more than a decade he worked for the Irish Department of Defense, handling accounts for the Army. “I was doing something I loved,” he says. “I had loads of friends there and we still communicate regularly.”
He was used to heading out with his gang from work for a pint at the pub and a chance to compete in the occasional talent show. “Sometimes I won, sometimes I didn’t, but at least I got a couple of pints out of it,” he jokes.
He had a home, a mortgage, and a girlfriend and “the church was far from my mind,” he recalls. Except for the one across the street from his office. He had to pass it every day and one day during Lent, he wandered in for early morning Mass. And he kept going.
Then, the thoughts started. “I would think to myself as I sat at Mass, Ray you could be up there doing what that guy was doing. Those are exactly the words I would repeat over and over. It got me excited for a while, and then wouldn’t hear it. Of course, it was all in my imagination, but there was a war going on in head for two years.”
The war ended in a memorable way. Father Ray had been deeply moved by the visit Pope John Paul made to Ireland in 1979. A year later, he joined a group of young people from the Catholic Youth Council who went to Rome to visit the Pope. He invited them to his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo and the young Ray Kelly was chosen to sing “Danny Boy” to the Pontiff.
Afterwards, the idea of entering the seminary took form root and he joined a missionary order (St. Patrick’s Missionary Society) that would eventually take him to South Africa and to posts in New Jersey and California in the United States before he settled into parish work in Ireland.
While studying for the priesthood, he and some of his fellow students formed what may be the only seminarian “boy band”—called Rafiki, the Swahili word for “friend”—which produced a recording of an original song he co-wrote for charity.
Because he was a priest first and a singer second, he at first resisted the offers that came his way after his wedding song went viral. He was asked to do “Britain’s Got Talent’ several times before he agreed. And that wasn’t only because his church came first. “My first thought as no, no, no. I’d never have the courage to get up and sing in front of television cameras,” he says. “Then I thought, well I’ll just do it and get it over with. I can get it out of the way, go back homer and forget it ever happened.”
It didn’t turn out that way. His version of R.E.M’s “Everybody Hurts” stopped Simon Cowell, his fellow panelists, and the audience in their tracks. Cowell’s eyes welled up and the audience jumped to their feet, applauding and cheering. “That was one of my favorite ever auditions,” Cowell told the Irish priest.
Father Ray made it to the semi-finals and he’s happy with that. He wasn’t looking for a new career in show biz. “It was a great journey,” he says.
And he’s looking forward to his journey to America this month. “I love travel as well,” he says. This year he’s sticking to the East Coast, but he’s considering coming back for a West Coast Tour. “Oh please, God,” he says laughing. “As long as the other hip doesn’t go out on me!”
On October 19, Father Ray Kelly will be saying Mass at 4 PM at Little Flower High School for Girls, 1000 W. Lycoming Street, Philadelphia. Mass will be followed by a cocktail reception to include beer, wine, and light fare. Following this at approximately 7 PM, Father Ray will perform some of his favorite tunes, including the Hallelujah song that catapulted him to fame 10 years ago. General admission price in advance is $50. Tickets are available at Eventbrite.