Feature

Almost exactly 50 years after Father Francis “Fritz” Gollery received permission to leave the priesthood, the 86-year-old clergyman has been reinstated as a priest of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Looking back on their decades of priestly ministry, the two longest-serving priests of the Archdiocese of Baltimore are grateful for the opportunities to serve people at some of the most important moments in life – whether they be happy times such as marriages and baptisms or more difficult times of sickness, loss and death.

At the Carmelite Monastery of Baltimore, a place meant for silence and solitude, the sounds of pounding hammers and sawing have become a typical – and welcomed – sound this year as the community of religious sisters looks to the future.