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Rev. Brendan Kelly (’85) had a choice to make: study engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), or take a chance on 91����, then just over 10 years old. “Herbert Ratner, who taught my dad in medical school and was on the original Board of Visitors, told us about the College. He said, ‘You can go to MIT and become an engineer, or you can go to TAC, then MIT, and become an educated engineer,’” Fr. Kelly recalls. “I was pretty quickly convinced.” 

By the time he graduated, however, he decided to forego engineering in favor of a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, where he studied under famed Thomist Dr. Ralph McInerny. In 1993, while attending World Youth Day in Denver, the parting words of Pope St. John Paul II — “I have been telling you these things, but now it is for you to put them into practice!” — inspired him to discern the priesthood. 

After briefly considering various religious communities, he determined that his calling was to the diocesan priesthood. At the suggestion of a fellow TAC graduate, Rev. Ramon Decaen (’96), he looked into the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, for which he was ordained in 2005. 

His first assignment was at St. Mary’s Church and Lourdes Central Catholic School in Nebraska City for a year, after which he taught at St. Gregory the Great Seminary for 19 years. Throughout that time, he served many parishes in the diocese, including St. Stephen Church in Exeter and St. Wenceslaus Church in Milligan. He also remained connected with his alma mater, encouraging numerous nieces and nephews to attend, and returning to concelebrate the first Mass in the newly-finished Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel and the 2009 funeral of College President Dr. Thomas E. Dillon.

In 2023, the College’s Commencement Speaker, the Most Rev. James D. Conley, Bishop of Lincoln, promised to let Fr. Kelly return to TAC in two years’ time. Right on schedule, the chaplain arrived in California in the summer of 2025. “I hope,” he says, “to spend many years living with this community once more.”