Australian Dictionary of Biography entry: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/kelly-austin-michael-10674

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Fr David Strong SJ, The Australian dictionary of Jesuit biography 1848-2015, Second Edition, 2017:
Kelly, Austin

Teacher, administrator, missionary, provincial; born Blackrock, Dublin, 20 September 1891; died Melbourne, 11 October 1978, aged 87.

Austin Kelly was educated at the Jesuit school, Belvedere College, 1903-1908, and at the National University of Ireland (BA, 1911), and entered the Society of Jesus, 29 February 1912. After a short juniorate at Rathfarnham, he studied philosophy at Stonyhurst, England, from 1914. His regency was at Mungret College, 1917-21. He went to Louvain for theology, being ordained, 31 July 1923. Tertianship was at Tullamore, 1925, and he was solemnly professed, 15 August 1929.

He was appointed to Xavier College, Kew, as prefect of discipline and sportsmaster in 1926, and then was sent to St Aloysius' College, Milson's Point, from 1928-37, being rector from 1931. He was the founding rector of St Louis' School, Perth, 1938, and was appointed vice-provincial in 1947 and provincial from 1950-56. Then he became superior of the Australian mission in Hazaribag, India, 1956-1962. Ill health forced his return to Australia, and to the Hawthorn parish, Melbourne, in 1963, where he remained until his death.

Cultured, deeply pious and meticulous, he was a good rector in the schools, ever on the alert to encourage the initiatives of the young teachers he was training, even when he would not himself have done the things they were doing, or done them the way they did. As rector, he emphasised the importance of traditional Jesuit education as outlined in the Ratio Studiorum, as well as the importance of producing good Christian gentlemen in the tradition of the English public school.

In Perth he soon became one of the most prominent and influential churchmen, and a trusted adviser to ecclesiastical and secular leaders.

It was during his term as vice-provincial that he steered the province towards final autonomy from the Irish Jesuits. In 1950 the region was created a full province under Kelly's guidance. He judged that the increased membership of the order, which was growing towards its maximum of 350, justified expansion of its works, and he seized the initiative by undertaking the management of new schools, parishes and university colleges in Hobart, Adelaide and Brisbane. Businesslike and energetic, Kelly exerted to the full the organizing ability that his long experience in office had honed. His determination, rhetorical skill and wide circle of influence ensured that the works of the order, and with their success its morale, would flourish.

Some considered his standards impossibly high and his manner unduly autocratic. When he accepted, on behalf of the Australian Jesuits, the challenge of maintaining a foreign mission in Bihar, India, and when the first group of six was sent to Ranchi in 1951, a few critics warned that resources would be over-stretched. In this enterprise, however, as in many of his projects, Kelly's thinking was far ahead of his time.

In founding the mission, Kelly realised a life-time ambition. He had always wanted to be a missionary, and in many respects he had always had a missionary career. It was recounted that when the question of when to make Australia a province was being discussed, it was only Kelly who wanted it to occur in 1950. Many believed the timing was not right, but Kelly wanted to start a mission, and higher superiors gave in to his wishes.

When he went to Bihar himself in 1956 Kelly was in some ways ill-attuned to the national style that the Australian Jesuits had adapted to India, and his health became impaired. But he doggedly saw out six years of administration, planning, exhortation and visitation; and he enlarged the foundations of the mission by liaison with an expanding number and variety of religious and secular 'co-missionaries'.

Impressively able, distinguished in appearance, urbane, energetic, and imaginative, Kelly was a remarkable 'lace-curtain' Irishman who had become an enthusiastic and loyal patriot in his adopted country. He was impatient of the mediocre, a practical leader rather than a natural scholar, and he remained a staunchly private man, despite his wholehearted pursuit of public goals and cultivation of a wide circle of prominent friends. Very dedicated to the educational and spiritual projects of his Church and order, he was ecumenical in outlook and sustained a lifetime cultivation of books, fine arts, and music.

(Reproduced by permission of Fr David Strong SJ.)