Speaking to students at St. Bernadette School in Silver Spring, Maryland, in 2008, Msgr. K. Bartholomew Smith, their pastor, encouraged them to open their hearts to God’s call.
“If you respond to God’s call, He’ll take you to amazing places and give you the strength to do it and do it well,” he said.
This year, Msgr. Smith – who was ordained as a priest of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington in 1998 – marked the 25th anniversary of his priesthood, and it could be said that along the way, God took him to amazing places. The priest, who mostly grew up in Alabama which has a small percentage of Catholics, felt called to the priesthood after college, and after his ordination, he later witnessed history while serving in Rome during the death of St. John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict XVI.
For 20 of his 25 years as a priest, Msgr. Smith has served at St. Bernadette Parish, as the pastor there for the past 17 years, and as a parochial vicar there for three years from 1998 to 2001 in his first parish assignment as a newly ordained priest. At St. Bernadette’s, his priesthood has been part of the fabric of the lives of generations of parish families there.
“I celebrated the wedding of a young woman whom I had baptized as an infant. I had given her First Holy Communion and been there at her Confirmation,” said Msgr. Smith. “To be woven into people’s lives at sacramental moments like that is a privileged intimacy that never ceases to give me delight.”
Now 59, the priest was born in Pittsburgh, and during his early elementary school years, his family lived in New Orleans before moving to Alabama, where his father was an administrator at the medical center at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. Now his parents, John and Bernice Smith, are retired and live in Virginia, and one of his sisters lives in Alabama, and the other lives in Germany.
In an interview before his ordination to the priesthood, then-Deacon Smith noted that although he didn’t attend Catholic school while growing up in Alabama, he was always grateful “for the awareness of the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist, there for me to find.”
That awareness, he said, was heightened while attending Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics.
“For the first time on my own in college, I came to realize how much I depended on the Mass to keep in contact with God… to encounter the beauty of Christ in the Eucharist,” he said.
After graduating from college, the future priest worked as an ad agency researcher and writer for a firm in Washington, and then for five years as a surveillance imagery analyst for the National Photographic Interpretation Center. During that time, he was a parishioner at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, and after becoming friends with priests in the Washington area, he felt called to the priesthood, and said that after entering the seminary, he felt “a real need to go 100 percent – to give my whole life in service to God and to people who need God.”
Msgr. Smith studied for the priesthood at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore and the Pontifical North American College in Rome, and later earned a licentiate in sacred theology from the Pontifical Athenaeum Sant’ Anselmo, a Benedictine-run school in Rome.
Then-Father Smith returned to Rome from 2002 to 2005 to serve as the priest secretary to Cardinal William Baum, who inspired him by “his love of the Church, his fidelity to Mass, (and) his humility.”
Cardinal Baum, the archbishop of Washington from 1973 to 1980, was named a cardinal in 1976, the nation’s bicentennial year, and hosted Pope John Paul II’s visit to Washington in 1979. The cardinal, a leader in promoting ecumenism and a noted teacher of the faith, served on the commission that developed the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and he led the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education from 1980-90.
Later, Cardinal Baum headed the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican office that deals with matters of conscience. The cardinal’s motto – “Ministry of Reconciliation” – expressed a goal of his life as a bishop, to promote the healing power of Christ in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
When Cardinal Baum died in 2015 at the age of 88, he had been a cardinal for 39 years and was the longest serving cardinal in U.S. Church history.
Msgr. Smith assisted the cardinal as the prelate’s eyesight was failing. “Even though he couldn’t be the principal celebrant, he said Mass every day. He was dedicated to the priesthood,” said Msgr. Smith, who added that Cardinal Baum “had a deep love for the sacramental reality at the heart of the Church and the nature of the Church’s worship.”
And on a personal level, he said Cardinal Baum was noted for his gracious nature, by everyone from the Swiss guards at the Vatican to shopkeepers in Rome.
While serving in Rome, then-Father Smith witnessed the millions of people from around the world who crowded the city’s streets after the death of Saint John Paul II in 2005. “The funeral of Pope John Paul II was astonishing…That speaks to the life, the wisdom and the vision of John Paul II, and the way the Church recognized and responded to who he was and what he has given us,” Msgr. Smith said.
Because of Cardinal Baum’s frail health and limited mobility, then-Father Smith assisted him in entering the conclave that followed. When the cardinals were locked into the Sistine Chapel and voted in the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, then-Father Smith waited outside the chapel doors and prayed for the future pontiff.
Reflecting on his years studying and serving in the Eternal City, Msgr. Smith said, “It’s an enormous gift to be at home in Rome.”
Later that year, the priest was named a monsignor, and the next year he came home to St. Bernadette Parish after being appointed as the pastor there.
When the archdiocese honored its priests marking milestone anniversaries in May at a Mass at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine, Msgr. Smith spoke on behalf of priests marking their 25th jubilees at a dinner that followed. He noted that in the past 25 years, there have been five U.S. presidents, four archbishops of Washington and three popes.
“When you measure it out like that, that’s when you realize how much has happened,” Msgr. Smith said in an interview.
Just before his ordination, the future priest said he hoped to have a priesthood centered on the Eucharist.
Asked about the favorite parts of his priesthood, Msgr. Smith said, “I really love Sunday Mass and the First Holy Communion Mass. I often say, that’s my favorite Mass of the year.”
He said parishioners are excited when new babies become a part of their community, and he joked that the 9 a.m. Sunday Mass sometimes features “2-year-olds with opinions” being heard in the congregation.
“To be bound up in the long life of a parish is wonderful,” Msgr. Smith said, noting that a man who lives next-door to the church was a fifth grader when the newly ordained priest arrived there. Now that neighbor and his wife have their first baby.
And the priest agreed that his own vocation has taken him to “amazing places,” from Washington to Rome and back home to the families he serves at St. Bernadette Parish.
(Richard Szczepanowski and Maureen Boyle contributed to this article.)
