Father James McEvoy grew up surrounded by Protestants in the strongly loyalist port town of Larne in Co Antrim. He was a high achiever as a young priest, becoming professor of scholastic philosophy (i.e. Catholic philosophy) at Queen's University Belfast while still in his 20s. His specialist subject was the now largely unknown 12th-century Franciscan bishop and philosopher, Robert Grossteste.
In the early 1970s he expressed some radical ideas, supporting the Belfast priest Father Des Wilson in his dispute with the Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr Philbin. However, by the end of that decade he was "putting his considerable intelligence at the service of right-wing Catholicism", according to a QUB colleague.
In 1988 he left Belfast to become professor of medieval philosophy at the Catholic university of Louvain in Belgium. He recently returned to the chair of philosophy at Maynooth. He is a close friend of Mr Jim Fitzpatrick, proprietor of the Irish News.