Michael Prior, CM (15 March 1942 – 21 July 2004) was a priest of the Congregation of the Mission, professor of biblical theology at Saint Mary's College, University of Surrey, and a liberation theologian.
He was one of the more colourful and controversial figures in the Catholic Church in Great Britain, and an outspoken critic of Israel and of Zionism.
He entered the Congregation of the Mission on leaving school and took a degree in Physics at University College Dublin.
Trained at Vincentian Seminary in St Joseph's, Blackrock, on completing his theological studies he was ordained in Castleknock College in 1969.
Prior also claimed that the expulsion of the Palestinians, far from being a consequence of the Nazi Holocaust or of the fortunes of war in 1948, had been planned by the founding fathers of Zionism from the beginning.