Glenmary Home Missioners

Glenmary Home Missioners, (also known as The Home Missioners of America Inc.) is a Roman Catholic religious institute of priests and brothers that work with lay coworkers to serve the spiritual and material needs of people in rural parts of the United States. Glenmary was founded as a society of apostolic life.

Glenmary Home Missioners was founded in 1939 by Father William Howard Bishop, a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. At that time, he noted that more than one-third of the counties of the United States, mostly in Appalachia and the South, had no resident priest. Glenmary's name comes from combining the name of the place where the Society was founded, Glendale, Ohio, with the name of Mary, the society's patroness under her title 'Our Lady of the Fields.'

Throughout the 1940s and until his death in 1953, Father Bishop's mission theology broadened. In February 1952, he wrote, “I am convinced that side by side with the great convert-making purpose, there is another objective...to lift up and improve the moral lives of the people around us, regardless of their beliefs or lack of beliefs; regardless, even whether they will ever accept the Faith or not.”

Father Bishop also founded the Home Mission Sisters of America (a.k.a. Glenmary Sisters) in 1941, two years after the founding of the order of priests and brothers. 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.'

Glenmary priests, brothers and co-workers are Catholic missionaries who serve Catholic missions and ministries in 11 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. At various times Glenmary has served rural areas in dioceses north to Pennsylvania and Ohio, south to Georgia and Alabama, and west to Texas and Oklahoma. However, more recently, Glenmary finds itself concentrated in Appalachia and the South. As of 2017, Glenmary Missioners staffs 10 missions in Appalachia, and the rural South.

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