Andrew M. Greeley

Andrew M. Greeley (1928-2013) was a Roman Catholic priest, sociologist, and one of the best-selling novelists of his era, publishing more than fifty novels alongside a parallel academic career studying American Catholicism. Ordained for the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1954, he earned a PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1962 and spent decades researching Catholic identity, education, and the effects of the Second Vatican Council, work that shaped the Church background running through nearly all of his fiction.

His novels center overwhelmingly on Chicago's Irish Catholic community, moving between mystery (the Father Blackie Ryan series, the Nuala Anne McGrail series), multigenerational family saga (the O'Malley Family Saga, the Passover Trilogy), and fiction with an explicitly mystical or supernatural dimension (Time Between the Stars, the Angel Fire trilogy). His 1981 novel The Cardinal Sins, a frank, bestselling look at two priests' diverging careers, drew sustained controversy within the Church for its treatment of clerical sexuality and failure, and was characteristic of Greeley's willingness to criticize the institution he served throughout his life.

Greeley earned an estimated $110 million in gross income from his writing over his career, donating the great majority of it to Catholic and charitable causes, including university endowments. He never left the priesthood despite the friction his fiction sometimes caused. He died in Chicago in May 2013, five years after a serious taxi accident had left him in declining health.