Leadership transition coming to Baltimore Basilica as Father Boric prepares to enter Carmelite hermitage

As rector of the Baltimore Basilica for the last five years, Father James Boric has been a whirlwind of ministry.

He launched the Source of All Hope outreach that allows young “urban missionaries” to live in community while they devote themselves to befriending and praying with homeless men and women.

He established perpetual adoration inside a renovated undercroft chapel and expanded opportunities for the sacrament of reconciliation. The young priest also hosted new large-scale events such as archdiocesan Rosary Congresses and helped grow the young adult ministry at America’s first cathedral.

With his encouragement, four parishioners entered the seminary and three women entered religious life.

Yet, even as he felt he was following God’s call through active parish ministry, an attraction to a monastic life kept tugging on his heart. The yearning began when he was first exploring a religious vocation and didn’t go away after he was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Baltimore in 2014.

After much discernment and with the blessing of Archbishop William E. Lori, Father Boric will leave the archdiocese this summer to become a postulant with the Hermits of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel at their Carmelite hermitage in Lake Elmo, Minn. His final Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary will be June 26 at 10:45 a.m.

Father Brendan Fitzgerald, associate pastor of Sacred Heart in Glyndon, will succeed Father Boric as basilica rector July 1.

“I feel God just calling me to a hidden life of interceding for the world and the church,” Father Boric explained, “but ultimately a vocation of love – receiving the love of the Father and then loving him in return. That’s what the contemplative vocation is.”

As a Carmelite, Father Boric said he expects to devote much time praying for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, clergy and laity and for the Catholic Church at large. The Carmelites of the Minnesota monastery practice periods of silence and solitude and do not minister outside their monastery except to provide retreats, conferences and spiritual direction to Carmelite nuns.

Father Boric, who has also served as associate pastor of St. Margaret in Bel Air and St. John the Evangelist in Severna Park, said he is very familiar with the Carmelite charism. For the last 13 years, he has spent one or two weeks a year living with the Carmelites at the Minnesota hermitage. Father Patrick Peach, a former priest of the Archdiocese of Baltimore who now serves as a Carmelite hermit at Lake Elmo as Father Peter of Jesus, is Father Boric’s best friend.

Father Peter of Jesus’s priestly example has been a “great inspiration,” Father Boric said, but not the reason he is entering the monastery.

“I felt that God had something he wanted me to do in Baltimore specifically,” Father Boric said, “and once perpetual adoration was filled at the basilica (the only parish in the city that offers around-the-clock eucharistic adoration), I really felt God was calling me to perpetually adore him in the monastery and to pray.”

He added that monastic life is not something he sought.

“It’s something that I feel God is asking me and won’t stop asking me,” he said. “So that’s why I’m doing it.”

Father Boric plans to enter the Carmelite community Aug. 15, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He will serve as a postulant for 6 to 12 months before receiving a Carmelite habit and a new religious name. After several years with the community, he will then make temporary vows and, after several more years, final vows.

Father Boric’s successor called it a “profoundly exciting gift” to come to the basilica as rector. He praised Father Boric for establishing what he called “an absolutely remarkable foundation” for the basilica community.

“There’s so much life here at the basilica,” said Father Fitzgerald, who was ordained in 2020 after studying at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg – Father Boric’s alma mater. “It’s sacramentally, devotionally and formationally grounded. In a sense, it’s everything I could ever want in a parish.”

At Sacred Heart, Father Fitzgerald was active in ministering to young adults, which he hopes to continue at the basilica. He has also been engaged in the pro-life movement.

The Calvert Hall College High School alumnus said he plans to spend a lot of time getting to know his new community, looking for opportunities to build on the work that preceded him. He hopes to make the basilica more known throughout the archdiocese and encourage more people to visit.

The basilica currently attracts approximately 325 people at weekend Masses, according to Father Boric. As a historic building that just marked the 200^th anniversary of its dedication, it faces the constant challenges of physical upkeep, the rector said.

Both Father Boric and Father Fitzgerald said it will be difficult to leave their respective communities, but they are looking forward to the next stage of their priesthood.

In a letter to the priests of the archdiocese, Archbishop Lori encouraged prayer for both men.

“May these two servants of the Lord continue to be agents of drawing others closer to Christ and his church and know the support of our prayers and of all the faithful,” the archbishop said.

Email George Matysek at gmatysek@CatholicReview.org

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