Michael Minogue stood before a crowd inside an American Legion post earlier in October to talk about health care when he started to riff instead on family and faith.
His father was an Air Force veteran who moved the family to New Jersey after his military service. But as one of four children from an Irish Catholic family, Minogue said his mother hoped he, or perhaps his brother, would eventually find an even higher calling.
“To become priests,” Minogue said.
The church, he said, wasn’t his path. But Minogue’s faith has nevertheless remained a driving force in his life, shaping how he’s donated some of his considerable wealth and, he said, guiding his decision to run for Massachusetts’ highest office.
“My wife and I came to the conclusion that God has a path for us to serve,” he said of his decision to run during a recent campaign stop in Shirley.
Minogue references his faith when he talks about his leadership style — “No circumstance is hopeless, especially with God,” he said in a video produced last year by his consulting firm — and about how it’s influenced him as a parent of five children.
His family has a “code of conduct” that emphasizes “faith in service to others and to God,” which he carries on a card in his wallet. He said he prays daily, and routinely references his religion on the campaign trail, describing himself as someone who looks to God for guidance.
Minogue is a West Point graduate who deployed to Iraq in the early 1990s, where he earned a Bronze Star during Operation Desert Storm. He worked at GE Healthcare after the military but is likely best known for serving as the chief executive of Abiomed, a Danvers-based heart-pump maker, for nearly two decades.
Minogue, of course, is far from the first practicing Catholic to run for governor nor the first Massachusetts public official to cite faith as an important force in their lives.
Maura Healey, the incumbent Democrat, is also Catholic. Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith didn’t play a significant part in his successful run for governor in 2002, but in later runs for president, he opened up about how his faith shaped him.
And Attorney General Andrea Campbell, in releasing a report last month detailing alleged abuse in local Catholic archdioceses, disclosed that she, too, is a survivor of childhood abuse, saying it would have been “inauthentic” to her Christian faith to not share her own story.
Rob McGovern, who met Minogue during their freshman year at Bergen Catholic High School in Oradell, N.J., said Minogue leans on religion “when times are tough.”
That includes Minogue’s Operation Desert Storm deployment, in which he led a platoon of armored infantry fighting vehicles against Iraqi Republican Guard units escaping back to Baghdad.
“I know that he relied on his faith during the Gulf War and in the military when he was dealing with those issues, being involved in combat,” McGovern said. “He definitely, I think, relied on his faith to bring him through those kinds of experiences.”
‘Separation of church and state’
While it is a central pillar in his life, Minogue has also tried to convince voters that his faith will not completely define how he would lead the state as governor. Nonetheless, his opponent has very much sought to define him over one deeply held belief that has become one of the great wedge political issues of our time: abortion.
Minogue has described himself as “pro-life,” but said in a Globe interview that he can keep his personal religious beliefs at bay when it comes to the state’s abortion laws because he believes in the “separation of church and state.”
Still, Healey has sought to use Minogue’s stance on abortion against him in a state where Democratic lawmakers have regularly backed expanding reproductive rights laws.
During a debate this month, Minogue declined to take a stand on a proposal for a ballot question in 2028, backed by multiple Catholic bishops, that would suspend a sweeping abortion law that Healey signed in August.
Healey, who has argued that her support for abortion personally “doesn’t make me any less of a Catholic,” accused Minogue of not trusting women to make their own choices. Minogue, addressing “all the women that are listening,” said he would “obey the law.”
“Are people in America not allowed to have their own beliefs anymore?” Minogue later told the Globe.
Minogue said he would also support efforts to lift the statute of limitations on filing complaints alleging child sexual abuse, a proposal that’s gained steam in the wake of findings from Campbell’s office of years-long abuse by clergy in three Catholic archdioceses.
“I support holding people accountable, and if that’s what it is, then yes, I support it,” Minogue said. “But I think this is an example of like, then that should be the case for all sexual harassment and rape.”
Still, on other thorny political issues, Minogue has not necessarily followed lockstep behind the leaders of his faith.
While Catholic clergy up to Pope Leo have criticized aspects of the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigration, Minogue has said Massachusetts authorities should cooperate with federal immigration agents, and opposed a state law that prohibits Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions inside schools and day cares (though he said they should generally stay out of such places).
He also believes state government should disclose personal data on people receiving federal food benefits in Massachusetts to federal authorities, which Democrats have cast as an attempt to bolster its immigration enforcement work.
‘God-given purpose’
It’s in his philanthropy work where Minogue put his faith into deeds.
In 2024 alone, the family foundation he runs with his wife, Renee, gave $275,000 to the Catholic Schools Foundation, where Renee has also served on the board, and $500,000 to Lawrence Catholic Academy, tax filings show.
The foundation has also donated to Catholic churches across the country, including one near his ski home in Montana and another in Paterson, N.J., whose priest joined Minogue on the campaign trail this month.
Minogue runs the foundation with his wife, and they invest in “programs with a focus on service . . . to fulfill their God-given purpose,” according to the organization’s website.
The foundation has also shuttled cash to educational causes, including Prager University, a conservative media organization whose founder has said most abortions are not moral.
The donation was among many that Democrats have seized on in the campaign; Minogue, however, said earlier this year they donated because he and his wife used the organization’s “educational videos” while homeschooling their children.
Minogue has cast his charitable giving as enveloping far more than religious organizations. The foundation has given to veterans organizations and charter schools, areas he said he felt “we can make a difference.”
The donations have been a part of what’s been a relative second act in Minogue’s career. He said there was never a plan to sell Abiomed — “I did not have a banker,” he said in the Globe interview — but when Johnson & Johnson purchased the company in 2022 for $16 billion, he was left with a sizable sum (he received more than $240 million in separation payments).
A friend from West Point, Chicago executive John DeBlasio, said he had long tried to convince Minogue to go into politics, maybe even working with the national Republican Governors Association.
Robert Neuner, Minogue’s childhood friend who chairs a super PAC supporting his campaign, said Minogue “very much felt it was God’s calling” to run for governor.
“He prayed over it,” Neuner said. “He consulted with a lot of people. He consulted with priests. He consulted with lay people like myself. We all gave him unsolicited advice and . . . most people probably told him not to do it.”
Minogue obviously did.
“I remember him coming to me,” Neuner said, “and [he] says, ‘You know, I prayed over it, and I just feel like God wants me to do this.’ ”
Correction: Due to a reporting error, an earlier version of this incorrectly identified which branch of the military Michael Minogue’s father served in. His father served in the Air Force. The Globe regrets the error.
Chris Van Buskirk can be reached at chris.vanb@globe.com. Follow him on X @byChrisVan