The Most Reverend Clarence Kelly

Bishop Clarence Kelly was the Founder and Spiritual Father of the Congregation of St. Pius V.  He was ordained to the holy priesthood in Econe, Switzerland, by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on April 14, 1973.  In 1984 he founded the Congregation of the Daughters of Mary, Mother of Our Savior.  On October 19, 1993, he received episcopal consecration from Bishop Alfred Mendez, a retired Roman Catholic Bishop.  Then, in 1996 Bishop Kelly founded the Congregation of St. Pius V.  Bishop Kelly’s episcopal lineage can be traced back to St. Pius X.   (Click here to view episcopal lineage diagram.)

Words of The Most Reverend Clarence Kelly:
“The Son of God became a Man for our sake.  To redeem us He died upon the cross.  To re-present His bloody sacrifice of the cross in an unbloody manner, to memorialize it until the end of time and to apply its fruits, He instituted the New Testament priesthood and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  It is this priesthood and this Mass that the reformers have tried to take from us.  But God has not allowed them to be completely successful.  I have no doubt myself that He raised up Archbishop Lefebvre to contribute to the continuation of the priesthood and the true Mass.  And now by God’s mercy we also are in a position to help contribute to the continuation of the priesthood and the true Mass.  For this we are grateful to him and to the late Bishop Alfred Mendez who, as one priest said, took a ‘most courageous step for the preservation of our holy Catholic Faith in this age of modernism.’”