Kent, John (c.1699–1778), Roman catholic priest, was born on the border of Co. Waterford and Co. Tipperary in the diocese of Waterford and Lismore about 1699. Nothing is known of his parents, but as his sister was described in 1759 as having ‘person, language, and education’ and Kent was educated on the continent it may be assumed that they were among the minority of catholics who were comfortably off. Kent attended the University of Louvain, where he graduated in arts in 1719. Having subsequently taken holy orders, he served for a time as curate in the parish of St John the Baptist in Maastricht and as rector of the small Irish College at Antwerp. It is a measure of his abilities, and of the impression he made, that when the presidency of the Irish Pastoral College in Louvain fell vacant Kent was appointed to the position on 10 June 1732 in preference to Patrick Fitzsimons (qv), later archbishop of Dublin (1763–9). A year later (8 June 1733) he obtained a licentiate in theology without having to defend a thesis. Although he was known as ‘Slempodium Kent’ in some quarters as a result, Kent seemed set fair for elevation to an Irish bishopric in due course, and this would probably have been his future had not Pope Benedict XIV asked him in 1742 to undertake a secret investigation into the state of the Irish church.
Benedict was prompted to order this inquiry by expressions of unease from a number of quarters at the magnitude of the abuses that had crept into the administration of the catholic church in Ireland: the absenteeism of bishops, the admission of too many candidates to orders, and a general laxity in the application and enforcement of church rules. As a result, it was argued, the catholic population was ill equipped to withstand the challenge to their faith posed by the charter school system. Pursuant to instructions, Kent spent the best part of the months of July, August, and September 1742 in Ireland gathering the information that would comprise his ‘Report on the state of the Irish mission’. It was too short a time to allow him to visit all parts of the country, so he limited his personal inquiries to Dublin and to the diocese of Waterford; he relied for information about other areas on those already committed to advancing a programme of reform that would precipitate a sharp fall in the number of candidates to the secular priesthood and a virtual cessation of admissions into the regular clergy. This method of proceeding meant that his report is vulnerable to criticism in respect of more than just Connacht and Ulster, of which he admitted he had no personal knowledge.
Its shortcomings apart, Kent's report is probably the most comprehensive and revealing account of the state of the catholic church in Ireland in the whole of the eighteenth century. It is also crucially significant in administrative terms because it provided the rationale for the elaboration, first in 1743 and secondly, and more decisively, in 1750–51, of a set of papal decrees, the application of which precipitated a collapse in the number of regular clergy – from about 700 in 1742 to about 250 in 1812 – and contributed to the inability of the church to recruit the number of priests it needed to minister to a fast-growing population in the second half of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth.
Kent found the task of preparing the report physically and mentally exhausting, and when he failed to obtain the benefice he had been promised, he continued in his role as president of the Pastoral College in Louvain. The decision of Peter Creagh, bishop of Waterford and Lismore, to make him vicar general of the diocese in 1759 indicates that the high regard in which he was held endured, but he never secured the bishopric he deserved. He remained at the helm at Louvain, despite ill health, until his death on 11 November 1778.