Keith Kelly sat in a Mayo courtroom anxiously awaiting his fate. He was appearing before the local judge on 11 charges. His solicitor gave him little reason for hope, saying more than likely he would end up in prison.
That was 2005 and the 18-year-old Westport teenager had been “off the rails” since he was 12-years of age. This downward spiral began towards the end of sixth class when he was suspended for the final five weeks of the school term for fighting and being verbally aggressive towards the principal.
The anger that first raised its head when he was in primary school became an all too common feature of his teenage years.
“Hormonally, I was coming into adolescence and there was all kinds of stuff going on,” he says. By “stuff” he means his father who was “emotionally absent” due to his alcoholism. He felt a lot of anger towards him and the way his drinking cast a dark shadow over his life.
The eldest of a family of five, three boys and two girls, they all responded differently to their father’s drink problem, he says. “My response was anger and suppressed rage.”
He became a father figure to his younger siblings, especially his brothers. “I would have assumed his position in the household in a very dysfunctional way,” he said in a previous interview. ” I didn’t really know how to do that and it wasn’t fair for me to assume that role in the first place. But that was just the dynamic in our family.”
When he was young, Keith, who was born in London and lived there for six years, vowed he would never drink because he had seen how much damage alcohol could cause. “But I wasn’t able to stay faithful to that,” he says.
“I started drinking at a young age, maybe 13. I think I got arrested the first time I was drinking on a night out. And then I started experimenting with different drugs and womanising. I was acting in a very aimless way, ‘slobbering’ as we’d say in Mayo. I was listening to what the culture was saying would make me happy, just doing what you want. But my experience was it was making me emptier and emptier. I was living a very destructive lifestyle.”
Dysfunctional homes
He was spending more and more time with boys who had “similar wounds” to himself. “They had absent fathers and came from dysfunctional homes so that was kind of a family for me. We weren’t good for each other and we got into a lot of trouble with the guards.”
He was expelled from secondary school in third year before he completed his Junior Certificate. It was for an accumulation of things, he says. “It was the right decision, I have no bitterness towards the principal. He obviously had to run a school.”
Keith, who later went on to live and work as a teacher in Galway, had been on the wrong side of the law for most of his teenage years and his luck was rapidly running out. One day, there was a knock at his door and a guard was standing there. He served him with 11 summonses. “That’s when I started to panic,” he recalls.
His parents hired a solicitor to represent him in court who said it was more than likely that their son would go to prison. That terrifying thought prompted him to turn to prayer. Speaking at the Galway Solemn Novena recently and in an interview later with this newspaper, he said he sought God’s help in desperation. He began by saying the prayers he had learned as a child at school.
“Oftentimes [in the past] I would have said a few prayers as I felt I wasn’t being a good example to my siblings. I wanted them to be better than I was. I think where God used to get me was at night before I went to bed. My conscience would gently reprimand me, there was a self-confirmation like: ‘I’m not happy’, ‘I’m doing everything the world is telling me will make me happy but there’s just this emptiness.’ I would feel like I was not the man I wanted to be. This time was so short as I’d fall asleep and repeat the same [self-destructive] processes the next day. It was insanity looking back.”
The looming court case weighed heavily on his shoulders. “I knew I needed help and I begged God for it. I was always very attracted to the concept of God as father. As a young person all I wanted, all I craved, was a relationship with my dad. Your parents are the primary agents of conferring identity and as a young man, the first person you look to when you are trying to discover what it means to be a man is your dad and he just wasn’t there [emotionally]. The way you internalise this as a young person is [thinking] you have no value. I had self-worth issues all my life, you believe that there is something wrong with you, that you are unlovable.”
And then one day, something wonderful happened. His father stopped drinking and so began a new chapter in the teenager’s life. A year later in 2005 when Keith was aged 18, his dad took him to Medugorje, an unofficial place of Catholic pilgrimage in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina since the alleged appearance of Our Lady there in 1981. His sister, who has special needs, and his aunt, who had breast cancer but is “flourishing” now, went with them.
“For the first couple of days, I wasn’t participating in the activities. I was drinking in the bars, looking for girls, and up to my usual antics. On the third day, I just said: ‘Look, I’m going to give God a chance’ and I climbed this hill called Apparition Hill where it is alleged Mary first appeared to six young children. I don’t know what happened [to me], it is hard to put it into words… I fell in love with Our Lady. She completely swept me off my feet, if that makes sense, and I decided I was going to change my life.
“I realised God had given his life for me and I wanted to live for Him. When I had this realisation, when I was given this gift, I started praying on a daily basis, going to Mass, and to confession. I made a promise to Our Lady to pray the rosary every day and that kept me on the straight and narrow.”
Past transgressions
His court case took place two weeks after he returned from Medugorje. He knew the odds were firmly stacked against him. He remembers walking into the courtroom that day fearful that his past transgressions were going to put him behind bars. He had turned over a new leaf but would that be enough to save him now? As it happened, it was.
The presiding judge looked down at his litany of charges and then to Keith’s amazement, she asked him to tell her his story. “I was caught off guard by this,” he says. “I said I went to this place called Medugorje and that I really felt God was going to help me turn my life around.” The judge believed him and in lieu of a jail sentence, he was given 200 hours community service and a 9pm curfew for one year. He recalls the headline in the The Connacht Telegraph newspaper the week after, which read ‘Youth saved in Medugorje.’
He stresses he is not sharing his story to glamorise the life he led previously but to glorify God. “I was not in a good place and I can say with certitude if it wasn’t for the Blessed Mother I’d be dead. She saved my life, I love her. After that experience in Medugorje, she not only became my mother, she became my teacher. She’s been teaching me how to love but sometimes, I fall flat on my face.”
Following his court case, Keith joined a seminary and spent three years as a missionary in the Phillipines. However, he had to return home because of a family tragedy. He went on to study for a theology degree. “I didn’t have a Leaving Cert so I was very hesitant to go to university but a priest friend encouraged me.”
He lived in Knocknacarra for a year and worked for three years, from the end of 2017 to October 2021, in Athenry parish as well as teaching religion to Transition Year students at the local Presentation College. He met his American wife, Emily, who worked in An Tobar Nua cafe in Dominick Street, and they now have five boys, ranging in ages from nine months to seven years. A friend of Fr John Gerard Acton, the curate at the Galway Cathedral, Keith now works as a diocesan youth worker in Raphoe, Co Donegal. The 39-year-old and his family have been living in Ballybofey for the past four and a half years.
He is at pains to say he loves his parents deeply and stresses his intention in telling his story is not to “throw them under the bus”, more to be honest about his life journey. He believes the “healing power of God” touched his life in many ways. He is blessed with a very strong marriage and now has a close relationship with his father. “My dad returned to the faith and it was a massive sign of healing that I was able to tell him I loved him.”
His mission in life, outside of raising his children and being a good husband, he says, is helping young people find both a purpose in life and God.
“There is so much brokenness out there and I feel it is important to share our stories, our struggles. It helps people’s faith. God put a fire in my heart and I believe he uses our brokenness to help us grow in virtue and humility.”
