‘A bloke called Kevin from Dublin’: Irish-American cardinal who will run the papal conclave

The cardinal who announced the death of Pope Francis bore the ancient Vatican title of camerlengo and spoke in Italian, but there was no mistaking the Dublin accent.

Long before he rose through the ecclesiastical ranks and was entrusted with temporarily running the Holy See, Kevin Farrell was an altar boy from an Irish republican family in the working-class suburb of Drimnagh.

Or, as the British tabloid Metro put it: “Interim pope is a bloke called Kevin from Dublin.”