Kelly, James Joseph (1877–1939), catholic priest and nationalist, was born 11 November 1877 at New Ross, Co. Wexford, the son of Mary Gannon of Arnestown, Co. Wexford, and Philip Kelly, a merchant from New Ross. He won scholarships to the local Augustinian school and later to St Peter's College, Wexford. In 1895 he was sent for seminary training to the Irish college in Rome, where his uncle, Michael Kelly (qv), was rector. During his residence of seven years in Rome, Kelly demonstrated a flair for languages and acquired a deep love of books. He won gold medals in science and classics and was ordained in May 1901, staying on in Rome for an extra year to complete a doctorate of philosophy.
After returning to Ireland in mid 1902, Kelly spent two uncomfortable years at the House of Missions, Enniscorthy. His health and scholarly inclinations having proved unsuitable to the demands of itinerant preaching, he was appointed in 1904 to teach science and mathematics at his alma mater, St Peter's College. This was work more in Kelly's line, and several of his students secured notable successes. Unfortunately, his reluctance to accept authority, together with a weakness for drink and unsuitable company, provoked a falling out with Bishop James Browne (1842–1917) and led to Kelly's emigration to New Zealand in mid 1913. He served as assistant priest at Palmerston North and as parish priest of Opunake, before being appointed editor of the New Zealand Tablet in February 1917. The Dunedin weekly was then the sole organ of the catholic church in New Zealand, and at its helm Kelly was to exercise a powerful influence over catholic life for fifteen years.
Kelly brought to his new post an uncompromising attitude towards the perceived enemies of his faith and fatherland. Despite an unfavourable political climate in the war-weary country, he voiced catholic economic and social grievances, particularly over the lack of state aid for catholic schools. He spoke out strongly against the conscription of religious and conscientious objectors, and endeavoured to balance the war reportage of the secular press, which was uncritically favourable to the allies. Kelly's sympathy with the underdog helped to forge an informal alliance between his church and the emergent New Zealand Labour Party.
A passionate Irish nationalist, Kelly urged the New Zealand catholic community in vitriolic terms towards an uncritical commitment to Sinn Féin. His sense of outrage at the denial of Irish self-determination led him to turn the Tablet into a vigorous apologist for the new Irish nationalist orthodoxy. For Kelly and the numerous Irish-born clergy in New Zealand, the struggle in Ireland was as much religious as it was political, and the suppression of nationalism amounted to religious persecution. His anti-British diatribes provoked deep anger in protestant New Zealand, as in November 1917 when he described Queen Victoria as ‘a certain fat old German woman’. Kelly's strident advocacy was one factor in the rise of Howard Elliott, a baptist minister and Orangeman, whose Protestant Political Association rode a wave of anti-catholic feeling to political prominence in the post-war years. Sectarian strife became so bitter that Henry Cleary (qv), the Wexford-born catholic bishop of Auckland, founded The Month as a means of disassociating the catholic church from Kelly's Tablet. With the Irish question seemingly resolved by the formation of the Irish Free State, Kelly's last decade as Tablet editor was increasingly fractious and unhappy. Following his resignation in December 1931, by mutual agreement with the paper's directorate, Kelly's last years were spent as parish priest of Pungarehu, Taranaki. He died in hospital at Hawera on 1 February 1939.
In addition to his writings in the New Zealand Tablet, Kelly published a volume of Occasional verses (1921) and two other books, A pilgrim year (1926), an account of a trip to Europe, and The story of the faith in Ireland (1927). Pugnacious and scholarly, Kelly was a fluent and forcible writer of devastating wit. He did not know the meaning of neutrality; his editorials were viewed with reverence or rage, but never with indifference. Above his grave in Okato cemetery stands a magnificent Celtic cross, erected in his memory by devoted parishioners, who were aware that Kelly had broken his strength for Ireland. James Kelly regarded himself as first an Irishman, then a catholic, then a Christian. He divided his life equally between Ireland and New Zealand, but was at heart always an exile.