Born February 24th 1935
Died July 2nd, 2025
In 1968 Br Kevin Crowley arrived at the Capuchin Friary on Church Street in Dublin to take charge of the clothing distribution unit there but he soon realised that the people using the unit were in desperate need of much more than clothes.
“I saw the people coming to our church. I saw the people walking the streets. I saw the people looking into dustbins and taking food out of the dustbins.” As a follower of St Francis, “I decided something should be done for them,” he told The Irish Times in August 2022, his final interview before retiring to his native Cork. It was the beginnings of the Capuchin Day Centre.
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“We had no money. Things were very bad. I owed a bill for £1,000, and £1,000 then was a lot of money and I didn’t have it. I went down to the oratory, and I do believe in God in a very, very big way, and I said to the Lord, ‘These are your people and if you want me to feed them you’d better go get the money’. And we never went short of food or money since then,” he said.
[ Br Kevin Crowley of Capuchin Day Centre dies aged 90Opens in new window ]
That was not through divine assistance alone. Br Kevin went out and got it. “I’d go to Arnotts, Clerys and Roches Stores and I always went to meet the staff, having a cup of tea in the morning time, then they used to start making collections ... it kind of steamrolled from that,” he said. “I used to go down to Moore Street, meet the people, have a chat and they would start donating. There was one lady in particular, every week she’d bring a barrow of chickens up to the centre, up from the market. That’s how we got going.”
Br Kevin was also media savvy, beginning with the Irish Press. He recalled how the newspaper’s then editor, Tim Pat Coogan, and his wife were “volunteering here at the time, and she got on to her husband and Tim started making contacts with various people. He started doing articles in the Irish Press, and it went on from there.”
Other great supporters were the Dublin senior football team who began visiting the centre annually from 2011, with Sam Maguire in the later, glorious years. In 2017 Maguire, accompanied by players Michael Fitzsimons and Colm Basquel, was greeted at the centre with a joy that was unconfined by any loyalties.
Acknowledging that Dublin had by then won three All-Ireland senior football titles in a row, he forecast that “from next year on, we’ll have the boys from the beautiful city by the Lee. It’ll be Dublin and Cork. We’ve been a long time waiting for it.” They are still waiting.
Inevitably the Dub footballers too had connections to the centre. Former player Rory O’Carroll’s mother, Philomena, and brother Ross had been volunteers there. Other regular fundraisers were the self-described “Rams” – the Retired Active Men’s Social from Newcastle, Co Dublin, who held concerts for the centre.
In 2017 alone, the centre provided about 400,000 “units of service” to an average 1,000 people a day.
Through goodwill and cultivated connections, Br Kevin raised millions and fed thousands every year. In 2022, by the time he retired to Cork, at the age of 87, the centre had a turnover of about €3.3 million, all donated except for €450,000 that came from the State.
“We get fantastic donations from throughout Ireland, from abroad. I don’t believe in paying for fundraising because I believe that every halfpenny that comes to the centre is entirely for the homeless people, to make sure that they are treated with dignity and respect,” he said.
At the time, it was providing breakfast for more than 200 people every day and lunch for 600-700, Monday to Saturday, as well as more than 1,000 food parcels every Wednesday. In addition, it was providing baby nappies on Monday mornings for up to 200 families.
Unsurprisingly for a man of the cloth, one event at the centre shone above all others for Br Kevin from his many decades there. That was the visit of Pope Francis in August 2018.
It was, he said. “the greatest for me” and that the pope went “to the homeless people to greet each and every one of them”. That “the homeless people were being recognised. That was the most important thing for me.”
For his part Pope Francis remarked then how one thing Br Kevin said to him on arrival “touched my heart. That you don’t ask any questions. It is Jesus who comes [through the poor]. You ask no questions. You accept life as it comes, you give comfort and, if need be, you forgive. This makes me think – as a reproof – of those priests who instead live by asking questions about other people’s lives and who in Confession dig, dig, dig into consciences. Your witness teaches priests to listen, to be close, to forgive and not to ask too many questions.”
Br Kevin’s “compassion, devotion and nonjudgmental approach to helping the marginalised was unwavering”
— Taoiseach Micheál Martin
A few months later in Rome, Pope Francis recalled that visit to the Capuchin Centre and Br Kevin. Addressing an international gathering of Capuchins there he recalled how “recently in Ireland, I saw your work with the most discarded and I was moved. It is a beautiful thing that … the elderly founder told me, `Here we do not ask where you come from, who you are: you are a child of God’. This is one of your traits. To really understand the persons, by ‘smell’, unconditionally.”
Br Kevin was born at Kilcoleman, Enniskeane, Co Cork, and named William at birth. He was given the name Kevin by the Capuchins. “My parents had very strong faith. It was a house of prayer, not putting religion down your throat but a solid foundation, solid faith. My father was a farm manager, with five in [the] family.”
He joined the Capuchins in Kilkenny. “I was a signalman in CIÉ. I was, for a long time, thinking about joining the religious and I suppose I was selfish and enjoying life and then I decided to do something about it. Eventually, I saw an ad [for the order] in the Southern Star/the Skibbereen Eagle and then I applied. It all started off from there.”
He entered in Kilkenny, finished off his novitiate at Rochestown in Cork and was in “various [Capuchin] houses for a short period of time and then I ended up here [on Church Street in Dublin].”
Br Kevin’s work brought many honours, including the Freedom of Dublin in 2015 and the Oireachtas Human Dignity Award in 2018.
Leading the very many tributes on his death last Wednesday was President Michael D Higgins, a frequent visitor to the Capuchin Day Centre in Dublin. It was there in 2016 that the President noted how “it’s 100 years since 1916. But the only way to make 1916’s best promises happen is when we take care of each other.” What was happening at the centre was “the stuff of a real republic”, he said.
In his tribute this week he described Br Kevin as “a warm, caring yet fearless man, who dedicated his life to living his Christian faith in dedication to those most in need.”
He had left “a wonderful legacy to all those whose lives to which he made such a difference. Sabina and I will miss his messages, which continued after his move to Cork.”
Taoiseach Micheál Martin, a fellow Cork man, expressed deep sadness at the death of “my good old friend”, who he said was “a tireless and passionate advocate for justice, dedicating his life to helping those in need”.
Br Kevin’s “compassion, devotion and nonjudgmental approach to helping the marginalised was unwavering”. He was also “a proud Cork man who never lost touch with the home place that nurtured him in his early years,” the Taoiseach said.
Br Kevin died at the Mount Desert nursing home in Cork. Following requiem Mass at St Mary of the Angels on Church Street in Dublin on Saturday, his remains will be buried in Dardistown cemetery.
