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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8, 22 February 1900, Page 15

The Right Rev. Dr. Kelly, Bishop of G-eraldton, has received an official communication from the Cardinal Prefect of Propaganda informing him that the Vicariate of Port Victoria and Palmerston, formerly administered by the Jesuit Fathers of Norwood, had been placed under his jurisdiction. By this addition Dr. Kelly's diocese, which already embraced an area of some 70,000 square miles, becomes the largest in the world. Port Victoria has had a precarious existence from the beginning. The first Bishop was Right Rev. Dr. Serra, O 5.8., who was consecrated in Rome, 15th August, 1848, and transferred in 1849 (before taking possession) to Daulia. The second was Right Rev. Rosendo Salvado, 0.5.8., consecrated in Naples, 15th August, 1849. Before the possibility of his Lordship taking possession of the diocese, viz., in the year of his consecration, the whole European population of his diocese abandoned not only the new town of Victoria, at Port Essington, but also the whole of that diocese. His Lordship returned to his former mission in New Norcia, in Western Australia, where he resides as Abbot Nullius of that Benedictine Abbey. His Lordship resigned the See of Port Victoria, Ist August, 1888.