Glenmary
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Glenmary Home Missioners was founded in 1939 by Father William Howard Bishop, a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, to serve what he termed “No Priest Land, USA.” Today, Glenmary priests, brothers and coworkers are Catholic missionaries who staff over 50 Catholic missions and ministries, establishing the Catholic Church in small-town and rural America.
The Glenmary Research Center (GRC) provides applied research to Glenmary leadership, individual missioners, Church leaders and the wider society. The GRC supplies maps, religious demographic, religious congreation and religious census information.
Glenmary Farm offers a retreat-like immersion service experience in Eastern Kentucky for high school students, college students and parishes in an environment of simple living.
Father William Howard Bishop also founded the Home Mission Sisters of America (a.k.a. Glenmary Sisters). While the men's group was founded in 1939, the women's group was founded in 1941.
The charism of Glenmary missioners is to implant the Church in areas of the United States where it is not yet present in its fullness especially in the rural and small town areas of the southern and southwest United States and Appalachia.
'Glenmary' is actually a nickname. Both the men's and women's communities were founded in Glendale which is near Cincinnati, Ohio and both have devotion to Mary under her title 'Our Lady of the Fields'.
Glenmarians have special devotion to Mary, Our Lady of the Fields. The origin of this title dates back to the Middle Ages when a teamster had an encounter with a beautiful lady who wanted him to take a message to the people in a nearby town. She wanted them to embrace a God-centered life. In one hand she held sheaves heavy with grain.
The goal of home mission ministry is not to make converts to Catholicism from other Christian churches. It is to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with the unchurched and to build up the Kingdom of God through ecumenical cooperation and social outreach.
