Kelly, Oliver (1777–1834), catholic archbishop of Tuam, was born at Crumore or Curraghmore, Toomard, near Ballinasloe, Co. Galway, the son of a tenant farmer. He attended the school of Laurence Duffy at Peterswell (in the diocese of Kilmacduagh) and then went to Spain to spend five years (1795–1800) at the Irish College in Salamanca, where Patrick Curtis (qv) was rector. He may have been ordained priest at Salamanca and taught theology at the university (accounts differ on both points) before returning to Ireland, where, towards the end of 1800, he was appointed by the archbishop of Tuam, Edward Dillon (qv), to be administrator of the parish of Tuam and president and organiser of a proposed diocesan college.
Kelly was parish priest of Westport, Co. Mayo (1806–15), during which time he built a Greek-style chapel in the Mall, inscribed outside ‘This is an awful place’. More influentially he was vicar general and chief adviser to Dillon, who even applied to Rome to make him his co-adjutor (6 July 1809). A few days after Dillon's death (which probably occurred on 20 August 1809), the Tuam diocesan clergy elected Kelly vicar capitular, thereby placing him in charge of the diocese indefinitely, the pope being held captive by Napoleon's regime in France. Kelly's election was disputed by the dean of Tuam, Boetius Egan (a nephew of Dillon's predecessor, Boetius Egan (qv)), who was supported by the bishop of Killala, Dominic Bellew (qv), himself a contender for the archbishopric of Tuam, which he had already failed to gain on Archbishop Egan's death in 1798. Kelly was the candidate for Tuam of the other three metropolitans, Richard O'Reilly (qv), John Thomas Troy (qv), and Thomas Bray (qv), as well as the Tuam diocesan clergy, but was opposed by the Connacht bishops led by Bellew. The dispute, and contention over the succession, dragged on, despite the deaths of Bellew and two other Connacht bishops, until the release of the pope on 19 March 1814. The Congregation of Propaganda Fide in Rome having recommended Kelly for the archbishopric (19 September), he was nominated by the pope (25 September) and consecrated at Tuam (12 March 1815).
Kelly was soon in dispute with one of the surviving Connacht bishops, Nicholas Joseph Archdeacon (d. 1823), bishop of Kilmacduagh, who held that Kelly's appointment had been obtained by fraud. The cause of the dispute over Kelly's election as vicar capitular and then archbishop was social – Kelly was from a humble family, Egan and the Connacht bishops were from so-called ‘noble’ families. His achievements as archbishop were considerable. He presided over the episcopal synod that finally rejected proposals for a government veto on appointments to catholic bishoprics and for remuneration by the government of diocesan clergy (1815). The diocesan college (St Jarlath's) was moved to the French Bank in Tuam (1817). Acting jointly with the protestant archbishop of Tuam, the Hon. Power Le Poer Trench (qv), with whom he was friendly, he organised relief of distress during two Connacht famines (1821–2, 1831). On the subject of religion and education in Connacht he was examined by a select committee of the house of lords inquiring into the state of Ireland (26 April 1825). He laid the first stone of a Gothic-style cathedral at Tuam (April 1827), raised large sums for its construction, and was in Rome buying a high altar and canopy just before his death and only months before the completion of the cathedral, the largest catholic church in Ireland. An archbishop's residence was built nearby to replace his house in Church Lane. In the dispute over the wardenship of Galway (which was largely independent of the diocese of Tuam, to which it nominally belonged) he eventually accepted its creation as a separate see and consecrated the first bishop of Galway (23 October 1831). Apart from the veto question, Oliver Kelly generally avoided politics. He died 18 April 1834 at Albano, Naples, aged fifty-six, and was buried in Rome at the church of Propaganda Fide.