Michael Eugene Costigan (born 1931) is an Australian Roman Catholic writer, editor, former priest, senior public servant and social justice advocate.

He was the first Director of the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts and the inaugural secretary of the Ethnic Affairs Commission of New South Wales.

[6] He was appointed Executive Secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops' Committee for Justice, Development and Peace in 1987, staying in the role until his retirement in 2005.

[8] He attended St Patrick's College, East Melbourne,[9] a school run by the Jesuits who required their students to reach a high standard of learning.

[5] In 1952, he was chosen by Archbishop Daniel Mannix of Melbourne to continue his studies for the priesthood in Rome at Propaganda Fide College and its neighbouring Pontifical Urban University.

The author and commentator Edmund Campion states that the paper's coverage by and under Costigan "gave a more thorough day-by-day account of the Council than any other English language diocesan weekly.

A. Santamaria; the sending of Australian conscripts to the Vietnam War; coverage of the worldwide anti-war movement; the Victorian Government's banning of Mary McCarthy's book, The Group; the hanging of Ronald Ryan (1967); Christian-Marxist dialogue; the challenging theology of the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; and the encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968) which told Catholics they still could not practise artificial contraception.

[10] His articles included topics such as the ordination of women; the formation of the National Council of Priests; Pope Paul VI's visit to Sydney in 1970; one of the first visits of Mother Teresa to Australia; the collapse of Melbourne's West Gate Bridge; the discovery in Melbourne of the Great Train Robber Ronald Biggs and his escape to South America; and the controversial return to Australia of the communist journalist Wilfred Burchett.

Costigan found this a stimulating period, writing:[5] There my education was much improved by fellow staff members like Walsh himself, the cartoonist Michael Leunig (with whom I shared an office for two years) ... the Victorian Government Minister Ian Baker, the late John Hepworth and the late Richard Beckett, alias Sam Orr, a restaurant reviewer ... colourful columnists, contributors and book reviewers.

They included two other politicians-in-waiting, Barry Jones and Tom Roper, as well as Mungo MacCallum, Barry Humphries, Germaine Greer, Bob Ellis, Beatrice Faust, Phillip Adams, Morris Lurie, the late Penny Harding, Edward Kynaston (my eventual successor as literary editor), Francis James, the late Max Teichmann ...During the same period Michael Costigan also wrote for Edmund Campion's Catholic-oriented fortnightly newsletter Report.

The second, back in Sydney under the Wran Government, at the invitation of the President of the Ethnic Affairs Commission of New South Wales, Dr Paolo Totaro, as that organisation's first appointed Secretary (1985–1987).

[8][9][5] Both before and after retirement Dr Costigan continued to write, as a freelance journalist and specialist book reviewer, for a variety of publications, mostly Catholic and social justice-related in nature.

[9] Dr Costigan has been honoured by the award of Life Memberships of the New South Wales Fellowship of Australian Writers and the Australasian Catholic Press Association.