God & I: Kevin Wells

CAN you tell us about your religious upbringing and who influenced you the most in matters of faith? 

I was blessed to be raised in a large Catholic family by parents who led us to love God, understand the soul’s need for the sacraments, and appreciate the vitality of prayer. Each of my seven siblings remain faithful to the Church, in part because my parents led the family Rosary. In a way we couldn’t have known, I think Mary began to mother my brothers and sisters from the very beginning of our lives. Of course, we committed loads of sins – with me at the top – but we were always led back, mysteriously, to the sovereign God. 

The greatest influence on my life was my dad’s brother - my uncle, Monsignor Thomas Wells. I grew up in his shadow in the 1970s and ’80s. He was a bright light in the Washington, DC, archdiocese from the beginning of his priesthood. What gave his vocation its tenderest fruit, though, was his devotion to the Eucharist, Our Lady, and prayer. His effervescence and Spirit-fueled heart gave him the ability to preach on indelicate or thornier Gospel passages with little difficulty. He pierced hardened hearts because people sensed he cared for their souls – not just their feelings. In his 29 years as a priest, he guided, redirected, and saved many hundreds of souls who had lost their way. Many became priests. His easy wit, warmth and the glint in his blue eyes certainly helped make his priesthood powerful.

Tragically, Msgr. Wells was stabbed to death in his parish rectory in the year 2000. Cardinal James Hickey had sent him to Mother Seton parish in Maryland to build a new church - but also to heal it. Previous pastors and priests there were actively homosexual, and Cardinal Hickey gave my uncle the tough task of setting things right. A little over a year later, he was murdered. As Scripture states, Satan is a murderer; and he ended my uncle’s life.

You started your writing career as a sports reporter. Why did you choose this job?

I grew up in a family with five brothers who played year-round sports. I discerned early in life that I enjoyed writing almost as much as sports. As I grew, I wondered, “Wouldn’t it be great to combine writing with sports?” So I became a sports journalist in high school, and the rest is history. 

In 2009, you nearly died from brain hemorrhage. Surgery failed to control the bleeding in your brain, and a priest administered you last rites. Even today, witnesses in the neurological intensive care unit tell of the miracle that took place at your bedside. Can you describe what happened?

As I lay my pillow on the bed for sleep one night, it felt like someone stabbed me in the head with an ice pick. I knew immediately I was having a brain aneurysm. I was rushed to the hospital with blood and fluids pushing into my brain. Because the malformation was lodged deep in my brain, surgeons told my wife Krista they couldn’t get to the tangled vessels, so they were forced to discontinue brain surgery. It seemed this was the time for me to die. Krista called Father Jim Stack, my uncle, Msgr. Wells’ best friend, who had recently begun a healing ministry.

Father Stack came with an assistant into my neuro-ICU room. It was dark and cold, and I was incapacitated post-surgery. He told me later that he knelt down at my bedside and whispered, “Kevin, we’ve been praying the Divine Chaplet and calling on the saints to intercede for you. Is there a saint we can call on for you?” He said I whispered, “Bring my uncle Tommy down. I need Tommy now.” I was referring to Monsignor Wells. Father Stack stood up and moved to the foot of my bed, and began to call on his best friend: “Tommy, your nephew Kevin just asked for you to save his life. Ask Jesus to save him.” 

Thereafter, he and his assistant felt the presence of light and the room temperature dramatically change, falling into an all-encompassing warmth. His assistant later told me she almost fainted; she knew something of a supernatural nature was unfolding. Father Stack said he knew it was a miracle when he sensed part of a heavenly court encircling my bed. He said he knew I’d been healed. The next day a CAT scan revealed – lo and behold – the bleeding and the malformation had vanished.

Did this extraordinary event change you, and lead you to begin promoting the Catholic faith by writing, speaking, and becoming an evangelist?

Absolutely. Two things became clear to me as I began to heal. One was that, in a strange way that is hard to explain, I was seeing people as souls, rather than bodies.

And the other was a strong feeling of needing to love more sacrificially, and to move closer to Christ’s Sacred Heart. In time, sadly, I became aware that many priests had become too comfortable. In a way I didn’t see prior to my near-death experience, I saw (in a way that wasn’t of my choosing) that many seemed far too comfortable in their priesthood. They were hesitant or afraid to proclaim the difficult parts of the Gospel. Sadly, it seemed to me, many had rejected their burden of sacrificing for their flock – or even prayer itself. I wondered if they truly believed and understood their ontological identity and the power of their anointed hands. 

Your bestselling book The Priests We Need to Save the Church was released in 2019 and quickly circulated among seminarians in America and beyond. What motivated you to write this book?

My motivation stemmed from the urgent need for both clergy and laity to love sacrificially, as Christ did, who loved us by embracing the cross. Christ desires all of us, not just the leftovers.

Initially, I hesitated to write the book because of judgmentalism. Passing judgment on others is spiritually dangerous, and I questioned my right to pen a book advising priests on how to be priests. However, after six or seven years of pushing down what I now believe was the prompting of the Holy Spirit I realized that my book was simply a plea for priests to nourish their flocks as Christ nourished His for three years. 

I began to explore the lives of the great priest-saints – John Vianney, Bosco, Kolbe, John Newman, Neri – some of the greatest priests throughout history. I knew I couldn’t write a book urging holiness in the priesthood without first understanding how these extraordinary men lived. A thread of eight common and holy themes emerged, so I built my book around them. In essence, the holy priest-saints made the centerpiece of their vocation identification with the crucified Christ, who poured Himself out completely. This is what the priest-saints did each day. They gave their entire lives – their sacrifices, their time, prayers, fasts, mortifications, unrelenting love – because they burned with a desire to bring souls to heaven. This is the call I encouraged in my book. Thankfully, the book has been distributed in seminaries across five continents. 

In 2021, inspired by the remarkable life of a priest, you wrote Priest and Beggar - The Heroic Life of Venerable Aloysius Schwartz. This is the story of a different kind of American hero: an everyday priest who confronted corruption, slander, persecution and death for the sake of God’s poor. Why is his life so little recognized, particularly in his own country, the United States?

I believe that “Father Al” will be the next canonized American saint. The amount of work he did for the poor, abandoned, and downtrodden is unimaginable. He changed the world. Hundreds of thousands of lives were saved because he saw the face of Jesus in the poor.

Father Al perhaps comes across to clergy in the United States as a radical. He worked 14 to 16 hours each day of his life, and prayed three hours daily. Like Mother Teresa, he did the most repulsive tasks for the poor – pulling worms from their wounds, embracing and washing them, picking them off the streets. 

Today, Father Al is known as the spiritual father to 170,000 high school graduates from the Boystown and Girlstown communities he founded worldwide. Even today, there are more than  20,000 children being educated and cared for by the Sisters of Mary; the order he founded in post-war Korea in 1964. I urge your readers to learn about their holy work at: worldvillages.org

In your newest book The Hermit, the Priest Who Saved a Soul, a Marriage and a Family, you guide readers through the unforgettable story of a pastor who becomes a hermit and successfully helped your wife, Krista, recover from deep emotional wounds and addiction. Was it difficult for you to talk about such private aspects of your family?

Writing that book was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Each morning at 4:30, I would sit at my desk delving into a lonely part of my soul, where I’d pull up dark memories and write them down.

After my brain surgery something inexplicable happened to my wife, Krista. She began to binge drink red wine, which she had never done before. After about eight years, praise God, Krista was healed by God through Father Martin Flum, perhaps the holiest priest I’ll ever know.

During COVID-19, Fr. Flum understood that people like Krista were suffering from various pains, such as addiction, divorce, loneliness, suicidal thoughts. Unlike most houses of worship throughout the world, he never shut down. He kept the back door of his church open, and intensified his priestly work. He knew the burden of his role as a priest was to protect, heal, and save souls – especially during the pandemic, when strangely, churches seemed to fall in step with the world. 

He received permission from his bishop in 2021 to become a consecrated hermit. He now spends the rest of his life in a small cell in the middle of a forest on consecrated land. His remaining years  are a holocaust offering, where he begs God to heal a broken generation and a troubled Church. Krista asked me to write a book about what Fr. Flum did to save her during the pandemic, and how she believed the Church should have responded in 2020.

It has been said that the Catholic Church has the best message and the worst marketing strategy? Do you agree?

I agree 100 percent. The Church is in possession of the blazing furnace of Truth, but too often seems to want to trap or control it. Secretariat is considered the fastest racehorse in world history – it was never kept in the starter’s gate. It seems we’ve taken much of the Gospel and harnessed it in the starter’s gate. Why tame something sacred, explosive and True? Secretariat could never be tamed – he won the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths. The Gospel is pounding at the gate ready to stretch out across the world, but sadly the Church seems to have straightjacketed Christ’s harder messages, perhaps in subservience or deference to the modern world. 

How would you describe God to your audience?

God is my Father. In my sonship, I strive to be obedient, but in fact I am a prodigal son because I fall into sin. Still, I know my identity as His son is to follow Him wherever He leads me.

What’s the central message that you believe God wants people in your audience to hear?

Today, many millions have ‘baptized’ their own ideas or inclinations into the world, despite those ideas often having little or nothing to do with the incarnate Truth. Essentially, the central message I try to convey is that following Christ and the fullness of Catholic teaching comes with a cost. Following the doctrine and dogma of the Catholic faith will provide for us inner peace and perhaps even lead to lives of holiness. 

I am a Franciscan friar from the Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua, Italy. Do you have a special devotion to this saint?

Indeed I do. One of my favorite saints is Venerable Aloysius Schwartz. And he had a great love for St. Anthony of Padua because of his undying love for the poor. However, Father Al also loved the Saint of Padua because he was not afraid of proclaiming the truth. So I have a great fondness for your patron saint. It warms my heart when I think of him.

CATHOLIC writer and speaker, and former award-winning sports reporter, Kevin Wells was born in Washington D.C. in 1967. Kevin is a graduate of Loyola University in Baltimore, Md, where he studied creative writing and journalism. This led to a position with the Tampa Tribune, where he covered the Tampa Bay Rays Major League Baseball team.

Kevin is the best-selling author of four books, The Hermit, The Priest Who Saved a Soul, a Marriage and a Family, The Priests We Need to Save the Church; Priest and Beggar: The Heroic Life of Venerable Aloysius Schwartz (Ignatius Press); and Burst, A Story of God’s Grace When Life Falls Apart. He is a regular contributor to Crisis Magazine.

Kevin is the former President of the Monsignor Thomas Wells Society for Vocations, which is dedicated to promoting strong priests and seminarians who practice the fullness of the Catholic Faith. Kevin loves baseball, reading, and writing. He lives in Maryland with his wife Krista and three children. Visit his website at: kevinwells.org