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 co-workers are Catholic missionaries who serve in over 40 Catholic missions and ministries,in 13 different dioceses in the United States. Glenmary serves the spiritual and material needs of the Catholic minority, the unchurched and the poor by establishing the Catholic Church in small-town and rural America.
The charism of the Glenmary Home Missioners is to bring the Catholic Church to areas of the United States where it is not yet fully present, especially in the rural and small town areas throughout Appalachia, the South and Southwest.
Father William Howard Bishop also founded the Home Mission Sisters of America (a.k.a. Glenmary Sisters.) The women's group was founded in 1941, two years after the founding of the men's group.
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.
Glenmary's name actually comes from combining the name of the place where the Society was founded, Glendale, Ohio, with the name of Mary, the Mother of God. 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'.
The Home Missioners ministry is to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with the unchurched and to build up the Kingdom of God. The five main areas of their ministry include: Nurturing Catholics, fostering ecumenism, evangelizing the unchurched, engaging in social outreach, working for justice and making connections to the universal Church.