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Edmund A. Kelly, Catholic
priest and college administrator, was born in County Galway,
Ireland, on December 7, 1870. He received a bachelor of arts
degree from Mungret College in Ireland and studied graduate
theology at Mount St. Mary's of the West Seminary in Cincinnati,
Ohio. He subsequently moved to Galveston, Texas, to live in the
rectory of St. Mary's Cathedral.qv
His internship was personally supervised by Nicholas A.
Gallagher,qv
bishop of the Diocese of Galveston, who ordained him to the
priesthood on July 2, 1899. Father Kelly was then made assistant
to the cathedral parish under its pastor, Msgr. James Kirwin,qv
and placed in charge of missions at Alvin, Dickinson, Smith
Point, Groveton, and La Porte. On New Year's Day 1903 he was
transferred to Port Arthur, where he established St. Mary's
Parish, the first Catholic parish in town, and built a church
and rectory. From St. Mary's, Father Kelly traveled by bicycle
across the county to Hamshire to care for the Catholic
community.
He was transferred to Waco on
April 25, 1910, to pastor Our Lady of the Assumption Parish. He
was named a diocesan consultor on the same day. In Waco he
purchased property and built a new church. In 1919 he was
transferred to St. Anthony's Church in Beaumont, where he added
marble columns and extensive art work and built a new rectory,
convent, and high school. The resultant St. Anthony parish
school system of twelve grades was fully accredited in 1925 by
the Texas Education Agency.qv
Many honors came to Kelly
during these years. He was named diocesan vicar of religious,
then dean of the Beaumont area. The pope made him a domestic
prelate (monsignor), and Bishop Christopher E. Byrneqv
appointed him vicar general of the diocese, the highest office
under the bishop. In 1926 the bishop appointed Monsignor Kelly
president of St. Mary's Seminaryqv
in La Porte. He kept his post at St. Anthony's and, in 1928,
left the seminary presidency and returned to full-time parish
work. He resigned his pastorate and all other offices on August
10, 1954, and died on January 5, 1955; he is buried in Magnolia
Cemetery, Beaumont. A high school in Beaumont was named in his
honor in 1964.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Catholic
Archives of Texas, Files, Austin. Diocese of Galveston-Houston,
Files, Houston. Robert C. Giles,
Changing Times: The Story of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston in
Commemoration of Its Founding
(Houston, 1972).
James F. Vanderholt
- Handbook of Texas
Online, s.v. ","
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/KK/fke52.html
(accessed March 3, 2008).
(NOTE: "s.v." stands for sub verbo, "under the word.")
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