Credit Is Due Rev. Fr. Kelly
CREDIT IS DUE REV. FR. KELLY
For the Handsome New St. Thomas Church.
$45,000 BEEN RAISED
Which Leaves but a Debt now on the Edifice of $17,500.
The credit for the building of the new St. Thomas' church is due to Rev. E. D. Kelly, the scholarly, magnetic, fervid pastor of the church, whose untiring efforts have made possible the erection of such a handsome church in a parish which has not an over abundance of well-to-do members. Rev. E. D. Kelly has been in Ann Arbor less than nine years. In that time he has built St. Thomas' music hall, which has been used as a church while the new edifice was being planned and built. He has founded the St. Thomas Conservatory of Music, which now has 85 pupils. He has so broadened and strengthened the Catholic parochial school system that its high school diploma admits to the university, and now he has just seen completed this handsome $75,000 church building, a stupendous amount of work, when it is considered that in all this time Fr. Kelly has had upon his hands the care of a large congregation, now numbering 1,500, including 250 students in the university.
The campaign for the erection of the new church was commenced in 1896, and the corner stone was laid in 1897. In the three years Fr. Kelly had raised $45,000, besides securing gifts of windows, altars, railing etc, and yesterday morning he found the church completed, excepting the frescoing and the altars, which have been donated and will soon be here, and a debt of only $17,500, which no one who is acquainted with Fr. Kelly's energy believes will long be left to remain on the church.
Fr. Kelly was born in Van Buren county, Michigan, Dec. 30, 1861. At the early age of 15 he entered St. Mary's college, Cincinnati, O., where he spent three years. From there he went to St. Charles college, Baltimore, M.A., and finished his ecclesiastical training at St. Joseph's Parochial seminary at Troy, N. Y. , in 1886. He was a priest at Battle Creek for two years, and then accepted the call to the professorship of English literature in Monroe college. Upon the death of Fr. Leavy he was given charge temporarily. After assuming the duties over the Dexter church for a short time he was brought to Ann Arbor, commencing his priesthood here in June, 1891.