Funeral Mass held for Father James K. Mallett

East Tennessean and longtime Diocese of Nashville pastor dies at age 84

The East Tennessee Catholic and the Tennessee Register

Father James K. Mallett, a son of East Tennessee and a priest of the Diocese of Nashville, was laid to rest on April 1 at Mount Olivet Cemetery in his native Chattanooga.

Father Mallett, who was born on April 24, 1941, and was retired from active ministry, died on March 21 in Signal Mountain at the age of 84.

Bishop Mark Beckman presided at the funeral Mass for Father Mallett, which was celebrated at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Chattanooga before the burial service and inurnment at Mount Olivet.

Bishop J. Mark Spalding of the Diocese of Nashville concelebrated the Mass, delivering a brief eulogy and the final commendation for Father Mallett. Also concelebrating was Father John J.H. Hammond, vicar general and judicial vicar for the Nashville Diocese.

Father Mike Nolan, pastor of St. Thérèse of Lisieux Parish in Cleveland, gave the homily, which was a tribute to a priest who grew up in the same Chattanooga neighborhood as Father Nolan.

Father Nolan recalled that unlike now as Our Lady of Perpetual Help is enveloped by urban growth and interstate traffic, the church in the East Ridge community was surrounded by farmland when newborn James Kelly Mallett was brought by his parents to OLPH to be baptized on May 5, 1941, by Father Harold Shea, the founding pastor of OLPH.

Father Mallett attended Catholic elementary school, received his first Holy Communion at OLPH on May 8, 1949, and was confirmed by Bishop William L. Adrian of the Diocese of Nashville on Dec. 8, 1949, in the OLPH sanctuary.

“Even at that tender age, he had an inkling that he was being called to the priesthood,” Father Nolan said. “He would tell others, and I don’t know how well it was received, that he was going to be a priest and that he was going to Rome. And he did!”

Father Mallett was a member of the Notre Dame High School class of 1959 before attending St. Bernard College in Cullman, Ala., and the Pontifical North American College in Rome.

Father Nolan noted that in Father Mallett’s Notre Dame graduation class, 50 percent of the boys (13 of 26) went on to seminary.

“It wasn’t a huge class, but what a percentage. It speaks well of the influence his Catholic community, his family, his neighborhood had on him. Growing up over at South St. Marks (Avenue), just a block or so away (from OLPH), I didn’t know him growing up. … But I, too, grew up just a few blocks away. I didn’t realize it at the time, but we grew up in a Catholic ghetto. Our neighbors were Catholic. We had the ability to walk to school. We were surrounded by people who practiced their faith and influenced us whether we wanted to admit to it or not,” Father Nolan continued.

He shared that God spoke to Father Mallett in many ways, which was like how God spoke to the prophet Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. Before I dedicated you, I appointed you.”

“And what a priest he was,” Father Nolan said, pointing out that Father Mallett was ordained to the priesthood at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome on Dec. 17, 1966.

Father Mallett was widely known and respected for his intellect and pastoral qualities. Those were reflected in the many roles he served within the Diocese of Nashville.

“Anyone who knew Jim knew that he was graced with an extremely superior intellect. He was often and usually the smartest voice in the room,” Father Nolan said before lightheartedly exclaiming, “I just spoke to someone in the visitation who said, ‘Well, he’s in a better place.’ And I said, yeah, but he might not be the smartest person in the room anymore.”

“But I can see him lovingly soaking it all up,” Father Nolan added. “And though he had a superior intellect, he was also blessed not to have a superior attitude but rather a humble servant’s heart. His desire was always to sympathize, to uplift, to treat everyone with kindness.”

During his 59 years of priestly service, Father Mallett served the Diocese of Nashville in numerous appointments, including chancellor, director of vocations, moderator of the curia, vicar general, judicial vicar, judge of the tribunal, college of consultors, presbyteral council, coordinator of formation for the permanent diaconate, and pastor of Christ the King Parish from 1987-2007, among others.

“I remember traveling with Father Mallett to the National Federation of Priests’ Councils annual conference in San Antonio when I was a young priest. I think he was the chair of our (Diocese of Nashville) presbyteral council at the time, and I was the vice chair. Recently when I visited with Father Mallett, I noticed a volume of Aristotle at the table by his chair and was surprised he was still studying such things toward the end of his life,” Bishop Beckman said.

“He replied that he ‘loved studying Aristotle in the original Greek.’ He spent some time reflecting on many profound moments of his ministry through the years, including teaching a class in Greek to university students and having them perform a choral version of the Passion according to St. John in Greek,” Bishop Beckman continued.

After completing an additional year of studies in Rome after his ordination, Father Mallett began his service in the Diocese of Nashville, which, at the time, included the entire state of Tennessee.

He served as assistant pastor of St. Louis Parish in Memphis, part-time professor at Catholic High School in Memphis, and associate editor of the Tennessee Register for Chattanooga. The Tennessee Register is the Diocese of Nashville newspaper. He later returned to his alma mater, Notre Dame High School, serving as a full-time professor from 1969-71, and was also an associate pastor at Sts. Peter and Paul Parish in downtown Chattanooga.

He also served as chaplain at Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, now the only Catholic medical center in East Tennessee, and as chaplain of the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga Newman Center.

From Jan. 27, 1971, through Nov. 1, 1975, Father Mallett undertook the appointment of diocesan director of vocations. He served as chancellor of the Diocese of Nashville from Sept. 1, 1974, through Nov. 1, 1975.

It was during Father Mallett’s time as vocations director that Father Ed Steiner said he started to more seriously consider the priesthood. One evening he received a call from Father Mallett.

“He was going up to St. Meinrad to visit our seminarians who were up there, and he asked me if I wanted to go. I said sure,” Father Steiner recalled during an interview for his 40th anniversary of priesthood in 2022. “I loved Father Mallett. He and my father were great friends.”

During that trip to St. Meinrad, Father Steiner spent time with two of the Diocese of Nashville’s seminarians, and before he knew it, “I hung a U-turn and, all of a sudden, I’m going to St. Meinrad,” he said. “I told Father Mallett I wanted to go, and he started the process.”

Father Mallett also helped inspire Deacon Bob True’s vocation to the diaconate.

“At age 61, I really felt the calling, and Father Jim Mallett, who was my spiritual director and mentor for the diaconate, said it was time. I slipped in just under the wire and was 65 when I was ordained,” Deacon True said during a 2024 interview for his silver jubilee as a deacon.

After leaving his duties as vocations director and chancellor, Father Mallett was released to study Church law and administration at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., in September 1977.

Upon completing his studies, he was appointed vicar for administration for the Diocese of Nashville in 1979, moderator of the curia and vicar general in 1982, and judicial vicar of the diocesan tribunal in 1985. For the next two years, while also continuing studies at Vanderbilt University, he served at St. Patrick Parish and St. Henry Parish in Nashville before being assigned to the longest pastorship of his presbyterate.

Father Mallett was assigned as the fourth pastor of Christ the King on July 1, 1987, as the parish celebrated its 50th anniversary. During his two-decade tenure, he oversaw much growth at the parish in the Belmont-Hillsboro area of Nashville.

On Christ the King Parish’s 60th anniversary, during a Mass celebrated by Bishop Edward U. Kmiec, the 10th bishop of Nashville, Father Mallett announced a capital project and fundraising campaign to improve facilities at the church and school campus. After six months of campaign preparation, parishioners pledged more than $2.75 million in time for the feast of Christ the King in 1997. A new parish center and extensive renovations to the school were dedicated on the feast of Christ the King, Nov. 21, 1999.

Father Mallett retired as pastor of Christ the King on July 1, 2007, after serving that faith community for two decades.

Father Mallett returned to his native Chattanooga, where he taught courses in international law at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga and served as Catholic campus minister there for the Diocese of Knoxville.

Father Nolan noted that Father Mallett was able to accomplish all that he did despite suffering from migraine headaches nearly every day of his adult life.

“Yet it was in serving others that he served Christ and His Church. It was in serving that he expressed his love for Christ time and time again, answering repeatedly when asked to fulfill whatever ministry or task set before him, to provide that servant leadership to those entrusted to his care,” Father Nolan said.

“In the Gospel passage today, we hear the beautiful exchange between our Lord and St. Peter. ‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these? Feed my lambs.’ And Jim did at the Newman Center and Memorial Hospital and at Notre Dame High School.

“‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me?’ And Jim did, in leadership positions of the diocese, serving his brother priests with tasks that most of them were glad somebody else had.

“‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ Jim did for 20 years as loving pastor of Christ the King Parish and in so-called ‘retirement,’ where he decided to become a professor at UTC and taught courses in human rights and international law, inspiring his students to make a difference in the world, to help good prevail. Always for the good. Always for others. Always for the kingdom. Ordained to serve and not be served. A priest according to the Order of Melchizedek.”

“I am certainly not a neurologist, but I imagine his head hurt because of all the knowledge he accumulated and all the wisdom he had in there that found release through his words, through his deeds, through his prayer, and most effectively through his servant’s heart,” Father Nolan shared. “May he rejoice, headache free, in hearing the words, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’”

In addition to Bishop Spalding, nearly a dozen priests of the dioceses of Knoxville and Nashville concelebrated the Mass and were assisted by a half-dozen deacons from the dioceses.

Before giving the final commendation, Bishop Spalding called the funeral Mass “a wonderful celebration for Jim.”

“Father Nolan, as you read that litany of duties and responsibilities and offices that Jim had through his life, my heart sank only to be thinking of all the meetings that he had to go to,” Bishop Spalding said to knowing laughs.

“There were a lot of things you mentioned. But I know Jim, and I know the priests and deacons around me here. There is so much work that nobody ever saw that he did. And we are thankful. Family and friends, my prayer is for you,” the Nashville bishop continued. “We celebrate the gift that was Jim.”

A memorial Mass for Father Mallett was held on April 17 at Christ the King Church in Nashville.

Father Mallett, who died at Alexian Rehabilitation and Healthcare of Signal Mountain, was preceded in death by his father, Louis James Mallett, and by his mother, Ruth Marie Campbell Mallett.

He is survived by his sister, Patricia Ann Mallett Mayo, his aunt, Jean Campbell Glassco, and many cousins.