Michele Hewitson interview: Bernard Kiely

Monsignor Bernard Kiely says he has no ambition to be Bishop of Auckland. Instead, he dreams of Te Anau, with just four parishioners. "I've had a word with the bishop there." Photo / Nick Reed

The charm of St Pat’s Cathedral’s administrator melts folk like Easter bunnies left out in the sun.

'Welcome to this place," said Monsignor Bernard Kiely, "and if you listen, quietly, Michele, you can hear the angels." It was Holy Thursday and we were standing inside this place, which is his place (although he would say it is everyone's place, and God's, of course), St Patrick's Cathedral, listening, quietly. I could hear them, I said. They make a hell of a racket, angels, don't they? The monsignor has a lovely laugh; he likes a giggle and the occasional bit of whimsy. He laughed now and said: "They do! They do!"

He has wanted to bring me into the church through the vestibule because "I always meet dignitaries here. So it's good to meet you here. Ha, ha."

I'll bet he charms the socks off the dignitaries, effortlessly. He has such a nice round face and keen and clever eyes and the haircut of a choirboy and that unforced, understated charm. He is a terribly nice man, and funny, and I was smitten (if that is the right word to use about a Catholic priest) right from the angels.

We looked at the holy oils and I said: "What does it do?" He said: "Michele! You really need to come and spend more time with us, don't you?" (He says it is not his style to attempt to convert people, but does charming them into converting count? I wonder.) He said: "This here is the Oil of the Sick." Does it work? "It seems to help. A lot of people get comfort from it." Like Rescue Remedy then, I said. He has met atheists before. He said: "It's better than Rescue Remedy!" He got the decanter of the most precious, the Holy Chrism oil, out of its locked case. Why are they locked up? "So nobody will nick it. The flowers go, everything goes." The Chrism oil smells of apricots and roses, like the most wonderful bath oil. "You wouldn't use it in the bath!" No, of course not. Not even if one was a monsignor. "No! We don't have a bath!"

It was terribly good of him to put up with my silly questions. It was terribly good of him to meet me at all in Holy Week. He is always busy and on call 24 hours a day and in Holy Week the cathedral attracts about 14,000 worshippers, so he is even busier than usual. "So we are bracing ourselves," he said.

He still, after 16 years as the Vicar-General of the diocese, gets nervous. "Sometimes you think, 'Oh Lord! Can I do this?' So we rely heavily on the Holy Spirit." To look out on the congregation, he said, "and think, 'I've buried your mother; you've just been diagnosed with breast cancer; you've lost a child; you're trying for a child ...' You know, it's very humbling. The more you get to know people and then when you stand up to preach at them, well, what can I say to these people? You think of the wisdom and life experience that sit before you".

He is a monsignor, which is one of those church titles meant to confer status and so, you might think, he'd be a bit of a grand sort of priest but he is quite the opposite. He is only a monsignor, he said, because it comes with being the Vicar-General and that if he went elsewhere he would stop being a monsignor. The Pope is anyway doing away with the title (except for priests over 65) because it encourages careerism in the church. He is in full agreement with this move. Careerism in the church is not, he said, "God-centred or people-centred. It sounds self-centred." He is very keen on Pope Francis all round. "He's a good man, isn't he?" he said in a way which suggested that not even an atheist could possibly disagree, so I didn't.

I thought that he would end up being a bishop, that he was tipped to be the next Bishop of Auckland, but he was horrified. Bishop Pat Dunn - his chum, who he goes on the Link bus to see, to have an occasional gin and to "chew the cud " with - has only just got his Gold Card, he said, and "it's a life sentence!" In any case, "I have no ambition to be the bishop!" Well, why doesn't he? "I'm dreaming of Te Anau! Four parishioners! Snowed in in winter! Beautiful lake!" Has he put his hat in the ring? "I've had a word with the bishop there and said, 'Keep me in mind!'" The church in Te Anau is called St Bernard's. "So I sort of take that as a good sign." I didn't think that you were supposed to pray for things you'd really like, but he said, "Oh, I don't know! I think I talk to God about anything. 'Te Anau? Not today?'" So, no reply thus far? "Ha, ha! No! Here's where I'm meant to be and it's a great place to be."

He might not want to be a bishop but I can't really imagine him with a congregation of four. Who would he talk to? What he really likes doing is asking people questions (he did think of being a journalist before he became a priest.) He'd have asked me almost as many questions as I asked him if I'd let him.

And he asked, at least five times, when were we going to have coffee, or lunch, "without the recorder? I'd like to ask you all sorts of questions. You are so interesting!"

I think he is, but he said, "I'm a normal New Zealander from a normal family." He goes on the Link bus. He does the grocery shopping at New World and sometimes people say, "Oh, Father, what are you doing here?" and he says, "We have to eat!"

He gave me a tour of his house, which is the old brick building behind the cathedral, and which he thinks is the oldest continually inhabited residence in Auckland; priests have lived here since 1840. We went upstairs and he said, "Do you like the wallpaper?" Um. It looked a bit mouldy. That was being charitable. When it rains, they get the buckets out. There is perhaps one perk of being the monsignor. "No leaks in my room!" The ceilings were lowered in the 70s, covering many of the pretty little stained-glass windows. The kauri panelling has been covered with hardboard. It is still a pretty little house. He lives here with three other priests and they have frequent guests in the spare room. There is a courtyard - "our little secret garden" - and a washing line and from here you get a glimpse of the cathedral. He likes to sit out here in the summer and "pretend I'm in Paris". He is 54 and his home life looks a bit like flatting. "I don't see it as flatting. We all just live as brothers."

The brothers do their own cleaning. "You're looking at cobwebs again. Is there one up there?"

He has some family pictures inherited from his parents, includIng a portrait of a formidable-looking great-grandmother. She looked a bit scary, I said, and we looked at her for a bit and he said, "I wondered if she didn't have any teeth." The side-board in the dining room belonged to an auntie. He said: "You remind me a bit of my Auntie Nellie, who lived in Grey Lynn with her cats. She was a great girl, independently minded, mischief behind her eyes. That's her sideboard." I felt absurdly flattered. You can see what I mean about the charm.

He is the fourth child of six in a church-going, sports-mad, close-knit family. One brother has Down Syndrome, "and he probably had the biggest impact on us in the family. He's just a wonderful man ... and I guess we just always had a sense that there were people in the world who needed a bit more looking after." His brother is a gift, he says. "Dad often used to say, 'Every family should have one!'"

He comes from Irish Catholic stock. He said, holding out a pale and freckled Irish arm for inspection: "If I were to marry, I'd marry somebody with some colour! To improve the gene pool. I think God ran out of pigment when he made the Irish." If he was to marry! That might sound a funny thing for a Catholic priest to say but he did think he'd marry and have a family and he had girlfriends at university. He now thinks that "if I'd been called to be married and have a family, that's where I'd be. But I think a lot of people are not called to be married and have children ... The longer I'm a priest, the more I realise the gift that being celibate is, in terms of loving. If you're in a relationship, your love is naturally and properly exclusive to the person you're in a relationship with. When you do that, you necessarily close doors." He knows people are curious about celibacy. "Well, I find it fascinating! I remember once a close friend of mine said, 'What would you know about sex and marriage?' And then the next day she was pouring her heart out to me about everything that was happening in her life!"

He wanted to be a priest from the time he was a boy. "I've always had a sense of the presence of God. I remember being a child, a 3-year-old, and watching water run down the window and thinking, 'Oh. God's here.' I know it sounds weird but I think when I was 3 or 4 ... I remember being at Mass and looking through the forest of people and seeing the priest and saying to myself, 'That's what I want to do.' It was something about entering into the mystery of life and that contemplative sense that there was more to life than meets the eye."

But he went to university and studied politics and education and decided to do law. It was a class in contracts which did for him. "I remember it was a misty Auckland day and looking out of the window and thinking, 'I am so in the wrong place'." And so he went to see the then bishop and that was that and now here he is, and he couldn't be happier. "I couldn't see myself doing anything else. I feel incredibly fulfilled. I feel incredibly loved."

I know I fell in love with him five minutes after meeting him. I imagine most people do. He has all sorts of friends: nuns and atheists and gay friends and even wishy-washy Anglicans, as I got ticked off for calling them. "You are too hard on the Anglicans!" He said: "I've got good mates at the Herald!" I named somebody I thought might be one of his good mates at the Herald and he said, "I can't name people. And now Hewitson!" Which ought to have been too corny for words but wasn't. I'd melted like a chocolate Easter bunny left in the sun, long before.