Michael Fava

Michael Paul Dare Fava is a British Catholic priest and former British Army chaplain. From 2018 to 2020, he served as Deputy Chaplain General of the Royal Army Chaplains' Department: he is the first Roman Catholic to hold the post.

Biography

Fava was born in 1962 in Kampala, Uganda, before moving to the United Kingdom in 1970. He was educated at Salesian College, Farnborough, an independent Catholic school. He studied theology at the University of Oxford and then pastoral theology at the University of London.
Fava entered the Order of Saint Benedict in 1980, and was ordained to the priesthood on 8 July 1989. He was commissioned into the British Army as a chaplain in 1997. In 2004, he moved from the Benedictines to become a secular priest affiliated with the Roman [Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth|Diocese of Portsmouth]. He appointed Deputy Chaplain-General to Her Majesty's Land Forces Army in November 2018, and promoted to the rank of deputy chaplain general on 30 June 2019.
On 5 July 2017, Fava was appointed an Honorary Chaplain to the Queen. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2019 Birthday Honours.
Fava retired from the British Army on 30 October 2020. In late 2021, he joined St Joseph's Church, Newbury, Berkshire, in the Diocese of Portsmouth, as parish priest.