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Oct. 1, 2021 – Fr. Philip Shields Kiley, SJ, was born in Worcester, Mass., on Oct. 27, 1938, the fifth of ten children of Francis and Margaret (Shields) Kiley. Upon graduating from the College of the Holy Cross, in 1960, he entered the Jesuit novitiate, Shadowbrook, in Lenox, Mass., where he spent two years of novitiate and one year of juniorate. He did philosophy studies at Weston College (1963-1966). For regency he was assigned to Fairfield College Prep, where he taught Latin and history for two years (1966-1968).

He studied theology at Weston School of Theology, in Cambridge, Mass. (1968-1972). He was ordained to the priesthood in June of 1971 at St. Ignatius Church in Chestnut Hill, Mass.

From 1972 to 1977 he studied and worked in the Washington-Baltimore area, spending a year studying history at Catholic University (1972-1973), three years teaching history and classics at Loyola Blakefield Preparatory School in Towson Md. (1974-1977), and a further year studying library science, again at Catholic University (1976-1977). In 1977-1978 he did tertianship at Berkeley, Calif.

Two settings defined most of his later life as a Jesuit, libraries and parishes. He directed the library at the University of Scranton (1978-1981) and then at Campion College, in Kingston, Jamaica (1981-1984).

Then he spent a year as a campus minister at St. Joseph College, in Wyndham, Maine (1984-1985); studied in the Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry at Boston College (1985-1986); and then spent eight years as a parish priest in a diocesan parish, Saint Bartholomew’s, in Needham, Mass. (1986-1994).

He returned to libraries for the remaining years of his life. From 1994 to 2001 he directed the library at Holy Apostles Seminary, in Cromwell, Conn. He spent a sabbatical year at Boston College (2001-2002) and then took a position in the university archives in Burns Library there, working with the library’s extensive collection of British Catholic authors, a job he continued on a part-time basis until shortly before his death. In 2013, he moved to Campion Health Center, in Weston, Mass.

In the late summer of 2021, he was briefly hospitalized and went to a rehab facility to build up his strength for planned surgeries. He was later found unresponsive and died in the early morning of Sept. 26, 2021.