Who is Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the acting head of the Vatican?

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who announced Pope Francis’ death on Monday morning, is now the acting head of the Vatican until a new pope is elected.

There’s a name for the person with that job: the camerlengo.

According to Britannica, the cardinal camerlengo in Roman Catholicism is a key dignitary of the Vatican who is personally appointed by the pope and tasked with “a specific series of functions in the crucial time of transition from one pope to his successor.”

Those tasks include verifying the pope’s death, destroying the late pope’s symbolic fisherman ring and preparing the conclave, the process by which a new pope is elected.

Farrell, a Dublin-born, naturalized U.S. citizen, held a series of positions at the Vatican before Pope Francis nominated him as the camerlengo in 2019. Here’s what to know about him.

He spent much of his career in the U.S.

Farrell, 77, was born in September, 1947 in Dublin, and after completing secondary school went on to attend the University of Salamanca in Spain and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

He was ordained a priest on Dec. 24, 1978, and began his career serving as chaplain at the University of Monterrey in Mexico. He moved to the U.S. to join the Archdiocese of Washington in 1984, according to his Vatican biography.

Farrell held a series of positions in several parishes in the area, including director of the Spanish Catholic Center, acting executive director of the Catholic Charitable Organizations and secretary for financial affairs.

Pope John Paul II appointed Farrell as an auxiliary bishop of Washington in 2001. He served as moderator of the curia and chief vicar general until 2007, when he was appointed bishop of Dallas.

He rose quickly through the ranks at the Vatican

In 2016, Pope Francis appointed Farrell as the prefect of the newly established Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life.

“My administrative assistant, came in and said, ‘The Pope’s on the telephone, and I felt like saying, ‘Yeah, yeah,'” Farrell said at a press conference at the time, according to the local NBC affiliate. “Eventually she did put on the Pope, and he told me that he would like me to go to Rome because Dallas needed a much better Bishop than I am.”

The pope named Farrell a cardinal later that same year, and continued to elevate him to positions in the Vatican.

He was nominated as camerlengo in 2019, appointed as president of the Commission for Confidential Matters in 2020 and appointed as president of the Vatican City State Supreme Court effective January 2024.

He has weathered controversies over the years

Farrell has been in close proximity to scandal — and scandalous figures — during his career.

Notably, from 2002 to 2006, he worked and lived with Theodore McCarrick, a once-powerful Catholic cardinal who was defrocked by Pope Francis in 2019 after a Vatican investigation determined he had molested adults and children.

After those allegations came to light in 2018, Farrell publicly said he had not known or suspected anything about McCarrick’s behavior.

Also in 2018, Farrell was criticized for allegedly barring a group called Voices of Faith from holding its fourth annual Women’s Day event inside the Vatican.

Some people, including members of the group, believed the reason was that several of the would-be speakers — including former Irish President Mary McAleese — openly supported same-sex marriage, among other issues.

When asked about the controversy at an unrelated event weeks later, Farrell did not go into much detail about the reason behind his decision.

“Having been told subsequently that I did sponsor that event and having been told subsequently what the event was about, it was not appropriate for me to continue to sponsor such an event,” he said, according to the French newspaper LaCroix International. “Obviously, when I withdrew the sponsorship of the event it couldn’t be inside the Vatican.”

Farrell has said publicly that while the church cannot bless same-sex unions, that no one should be excluded from the “pastoral care and love of the Church.”

Could Farrell be the next pope?

Farrell’s position as camerlengo doesn’t inherently disqualify or prime him for the position of pope.

The Times reports that only two camerlengos have been elected pope before: Gioacchino Pecci, as Pope Leo XIII in 1878, and Eugenio Pacelli, as Pope Pius XII in 1939.

There has never been a pope from Ireland or the U.S.