Father Jorge Cenala remembers the day he met Father (now Bishop-elect) Kevin Kenney in October 2005. A native of Mexico, Father Cenala was studying at The St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul for the Diocese of Grand Island, Nebraska, at the time. He was assigned to Our Lady of Guadalupe in St. Paul as his teaching parish. Father Kenney was the pastor.
“The first evening I showed up, I was looking for him all around the building and I couldn’t find Father Kevin Kenney,” Father Cenala, 50, recalled. “And I opened the restroom door, the bathroom door, and I found Father Kenney cleaning.”
Father Kenney smiled warmly, welcomed him to the parish, then made it clear what should happen next.
Father Cenala recalled the pastor saying to him, “If you’re going to be a seminarian with me, you have to work and you have to learn from me.”
Shortly after hearing those words, Father Cenala did, indeed, get to work. He started scrubbing a toilet. That encounter forged a friendship and became the inspiration of how he now lives his priesthood. After his formation at the seminary, he was ordained in 2009 at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Nebraska and has been serving as its rector for the last four years.
“Right away (the first night at OLG), I knew that he was an amazing, amazing, amazing man,” Father Cenala said of Bishop-elect Kenney. “That evening, he and I, we just clicked and became such good friends.”
The Nebraska priest called Bishop-elect Kenney “a great preacher,” “a great mentor” and “a great administrator.” He said the bishop is always “serving with the heart of Jesus” and has “a gold heart for the Hispanic community.”
One of his favorite examples of the bishop-elect’s love for Latinos involves a tragic accident suffered by a parishioner at Our Lady of Guadalupe in 2006. A young man named Benjamin received a severe electric shock and, as a result, lost both arms and both legs. Father Cenala would go with Father Kenney to visit Benjamin every Wednesday, one of three weekly visits he said Father Kenney would make to a local hospital where Benjamin recovered from his injuries. Father Kenney later helped Benjamin return to his native Mexico to be with his family in a small mountain village in the State of Michoacan, about two hours from where Father Cenala grew up.
Father Kenney went down to visit Benjamin several times over the years, and with the help of parishioners of Our Lady of Guadalupe, brought a scooter for him that he still uses today, Father Cenala said. Bishop Kenney plans to go down again in December to join Father Cenala in his hometown of Sahuyo for a Mass to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Father Cenala’s ordination. Father Cenala said he expects Benjamin, his family and others from their village to come to Sahuyo for the Mass.
“People back in Mexico really, really, really love this man; they just love Kevin Kenney over there,” Father Cenala said. “My family, my friends and especially Benjamin and Benjamin’s family, they just love this man.”
Such service behind the scenes and out of the spotlight is what Bishop-elect Kenney’s friends say characterize a man they see as humble and with no ambition to be a bishop prior to being named by Pope Francis July 25 to be an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Sister Kathleen Hayes, 82, a Sinsinawa Dominican, met Bishop-elect Kenney while he was pastor of Divine Mercy in Faribault (2015-2019), where she serves in pastoral care during her second assignment at the parish. She once remarked to him that she thought he would make a good bishop, “but being a bishop was never in his line of vision,” she said. Despite his humility and reluctance to consider such a role, she saw attributes that made his qualifications seem clear to her.
“I have to say, he is a man of compassion and justice, integrity and prayer,” she said, “and always sprinkled with joy and humor.”
She is particularly inspired by his homilies, which she said demonstrate his understanding of Scripture.
“I took my spiritual direction from his homily,” she said. “It’s obvious that he’s looked at and prayed the Scripture of the day long before he stands at the altar to celebrate Mass.”
Father John Forliti, 88, a retired priest of the archdiocese, got an early look at Father Kenney right after the bishop-elect’s ordination to the priesthood in 1994. At the time, Father Forliti was the pastor of St. Olaf in downtown Minneapolis, and the newly ordained priest was assigned there as an associate.
“The next four years, we worked together and lived together in the rectory there and had a great time,” Father Forliti recalled. “He’s easy to like because he’s just such a neat guy.”
Father Forliti, who Bishop-elect Kenney selected as one of two chaplains for his episcopal ordination Mass Oct. 28, said being a priest at St. Olaf was a “demanding assignment” because of the number of people who took their faith seriously and created long lines at the confessional. But, Father Kenney was up to the task, and especially clicked with the young adults at the parish, Father Forliti noted, adding that Father Kenney was himself a young adult at that time.
“There’s no question that Jesus is at the center of his life,” Father Forliti said. “He preaches often about the person of Jesus and getting to know Christ personally through prayer and through meditation.”
While at St. Olaf, Father Forliti taught the young priest — as he worked to teach all his associates — something he called “hallway ministry” or “vestibule ministry.”
“That means you’re out there early before Mass, 10 to 15 minutes before Mass, and you’re in the vestibule greeting people as they come in, and then you stay there greeting people as they go out (after Mass),” Father Forliti said. “You can accomplish a lot just in a few minutes.”
Sometimes, Father Forliti said, people are reluctant to make an appointment with a priest outside of Mass to address a problem or concern, but they are willing to talk for a few minutes right before or after Mass when they see the priest. He said Bishop-elect Kenney is a natural for this kind of ministry. “I think that being a servant is at the heart of what fires up Bishop-elect Kenney every day,” he said.
This care for others also extends to his priestly support group, which has provided support and encouragement for priests like Father Rick Banker, who has been in the same group with Bishop-elect Kenney since right after the bishop-elect was ordained to the priesthood. The group now has six members after the death of Father Michael Byron in 2022.
Father Banker, 63, who took a medical retirement a year ago due to a heart condition, noted Bishop-elect Kenney’s “genuineness, his warmth, his love for the Lord and for the Church and, especially, which I appreciate, his connection, care for and love of the Latino community.”
In a recent conversation with some other priests who know Bishop-elect Kenney, Father Banker said they acknowledged the fact that the bishop-elect “never aspired” to be a bishop.
“And that’s just the kind of person we want to be asked to be a bishop,” Father Banker said. “I mean, just a humble guy, not in any way seeking to move up the ranks. Those who know Kevin know he is just such a genuine guy.”
Father Banker called Bishop-elect Kenney a good example of what Pope Francis desires for his priests: that they be like a “shepherd among the sheep.”
“Our archdiocese is just really blessed,” Father Banker said, “to be getting someone like Kevin to be our next auxiliary bishop.”
