He undertook postgraduate studies at the Gregorian University in Rome in ecclesiastical history and in Oct 1966 was appointed to the staff of St. Patrick's College, Maynooth.
[citation needed] He served as vice-president from 1976 to 1977 and then when Tomas O'Fiach was made Archbishop of Armagh, Michael Olden assumed the duties of president until 1985.
Mgr Olden delivered the homily at the Ordination Mass of Father Alphonsus Cullinan as Bishop of Waterford & Lismore.
[5] In 2008 he contributed a chapter ‘Tobias Kirby (1804‐1895): the man who kept the papers’ to The Irish College Rome and its World edited by D. Keogh & A.
Olden presented a talk on Canon Patrick Power at a seminar in WIT, in March 2012.