Francis Clement Kelley and the Home Missions

Today marks the death of Francis Clement Kelly (1870-1948), Bishop and founder of the Catholic Extension Society. Born in Canada, he was ordained in Detroit in 1893. It was while he was working in rural parishes that he got the idea of creating an organization to meet the needs of parishes like his own. He saw that large portions of America were just as much mission territory as were countries overseas. In 1905, with the help of Chicago Archbishop James Quigley, he founded the Catholic Church Extension Society of the United States. It concentrated on building churches and schools in areas where Catholics lacked these. Kelley proved to be a master fundraiser. His magazine Extension, first published in 1906, proved to be one of the nation’s most popular Catholic periodicals. By the mid-1920’s, the society was collecting nearly a million dollars a year, and was estimated to have built half of all the American Catholic churches then in existence. In 1924, Father Kelley was named Bishop of Oklahoma City, where he served until ill health forced his retirement in 1944.