Fr Darrell “Chuck” Kelly, a member of the Divine Word Missionaries who served as a parish priest in the Deep South, had died after a lengthy illness. He was 64 years old.
Following his death on May 7, a funeral Mass was celebrated Wednesday at the former St. Augustine Seminary in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, where Kelly had been in residence.
“As we celebrate our former priest, Father Darrell Kelly, and his lasting impact, hope, and resilience, uplift his family and loved ones, strengthening them with warmth and comfort in this difficult moment,” reads a statement from his former parish, Holy Family Catholic Church in Jackson, Mississippi.
Born in 1961 in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, Kelly was a graduate of Catholic schools and attended Mississippi Valley State University. He earned a degree in criminal justice in 1983 before entering the military.
A member of the U.S. Army, Kelly was stationed in South Korea before his deployment in Operation Desert Storm during the Gulf War. Following his departure from active duty, he became a corrections officer in Mississippi and later decided to convert to the Catholic faith in 1966, having formerly been a Baptist.
“I reminded myself to stay in the Word—to remember that the prisoners are still my brothers, and children of God,” he would later say of his time as a prison guard.
“I needed to go where they were, and meet them there.”
Not long after joining the Church, Kelly sensed a call to the priesthood and began discernment with the Divine Word Missionaries—one of several Catholic religious communities historically linked to African Americans.
Stephanie Poole
After initial studies at Divine Word College in Epworth, Iowa, Kelly entered the novitiate in 1998 and went on to study at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, where he graduated with a Master of Divinity. He also served in a cross-cultural training program in the Caribbean.
Kelly was ordained to the priesthood in 2005 and was assigned to Notre Dame Catholic Church, a historically African-American parish in St. Martinville, Louisiana, where he served as associate pastor for several years.
He was then assigned to three other Black parishes—Holy Family Church and Holy Ghost Church in Jackson, Mississippi, and Our Mother of Mercy Church in Fort Worth, Texas—before a medical ailment caused him to return to Illinois in 2015. He then served again in St. Martinville before continued health issues forced his early retirement to Bay St. Louis.
Throughout his ministry, Kelly was active in the African-American community, including as a promoter of vocations at venues such as the Lyke Conference. He also assisted with events related to the Knights and Ladies of Peter Claver, including their youth divisions.
The announcement of Kelly's passing did not detail a cause of death, but he had suffered from kidney ailments and received dialysis treatments. He was in residence at the Dunbar Village nursing home.
Kelly was buried with full military honors this week at the Divine Word cemetery in Bay St. Louis. An official obituary did not list survivors, but family members were present at his funeral Mass.
Nate Tinner-Williams is co-founder and editor of Black Catholic Messenger.
