CSSS

I was born in Warren, PA (17th December 1937) and raised in Jamestown, NY in a Methodist/Presbyterian Home. I attended the University of Buffalo as an English major for three years. It was in Buffalo at nearby St. Andrew's, an Anglo-Catholic Parish, where I became an Anglican. I was nurtured at St. Andrew's by two excellent priests and heard the call of God to a vocation as a priest. Because of financial difficulties, I returned home to live with my parents who had moved to New Castle, PA because of my father's work. I graduated from Youngstown State University with a B.A. in Philosophy.

I worked summers in an industrial warehouse and after graduation answered a request in The Anglican Digest to assist the Bishop of Damaraland (now Namibia). For three years I was secretary to the Bishop in the See City of Windhoek and then spent two years in bush-county on the Angola border. There I taught high school classes to men who were interested in entering a newly planned seminary. One of my students later became the Bishop of Namibia. During those days of apartheid, Anglicans broke nearly every law in their educational efforts and socialization with the native people of that land. We were all expelled in the '60's and I returned home to attend seminary. The Bishop of Damaraland sponsored me to Nashotah House but, when I transferred my candidacy to my home Diocese of Erie, the Bishop preferred I do my last two years at Seabury-Western Seminary in Evanston, IL. I received my Master of Divinity from there in 1967.

My first curacy was at Trinity Church in New Castle, PA. I spent five years working with the Rector and two permanent deacons in that large parish. Then I received a joint call to be Vicar of St. Augustine's Mission in nearby Youngstown, OH and also Assistant at St. Rocco's Mission in that city. St. Augustine was an African-American Mission and St. Rocco's was an Italian-American Mission that had separated from the Roman Catholic Church 100 years earlier. I trained a Deacon to be Priest-in-charge of St. Augustine's and then became Vicar and first Rector of St. Rocco's Parish. It was a great parish with street processions and an annual four-day carnival to celebrate the Feast of St. Rocco on 16th August. There were floats with statues of Our Lady and about eight other saints, a band and, last of all, the float of the patron saint. The carnival attracted hundreds of people every year, including Bishop Ackerman who was then Rector of St. Mary's, Charleroi, PA. After about 10 years, I left to become a rector in Watertown in the Diocese of Central New York. The highlight of each year in Watertown was our celebration of the Feast of Corpus Christi with a full street procession. It was a great witness to our Faith with priests and people processing through the streets with Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.

In 1990, I left Watertown to become Parish Administrator of a Jubilee Parish in Hollywood, Fl. This was a great opportunity to work with volunteers. The parish, with help from the community, ran a daily soup kitchen, job and housing placement programs, a hospitality center, and a daily thrift shop/antique store. I had those administrative chores plus the day-to-day operation of the parish church with its daily liturgies and Sunday Masses.

While waiting for my appointment as Rector of the largest parish in the poorest city in Panama, I had the opportunity to travel the U.S. preaching to parishes on behalf of Food for the Poor. At that time, Food for the Poor ministered primarily to the poor in Jamaica and Haiti. It was a wonderful experience to visit parishes and expose them to the needs of the poor of the third world. It was also great to work with the recipients of the generosity of hundreds of parishes who support Food For the Poor. The people in these countries are genuinely grateful for the assistance they receive.

In time, my assignment came through to leave for Panama where I ministered to a parish with some 600 communicants and over 100 children in the Sunday School. Daily liturgies were begun again after some thirty years of being just a Sunday Church with one weekday Mass on Wednesdays. The majority of the congregation were of Jamaican heritage along with people from other West Indian Islands and a few new Hispanic converts. I was there for three Easter seasons and on Holy Thursday, nearly 2,000 faithful visited our Altar of repose, many of whom were from the nearby Roman Catholic cathedral. After two years I had to leave Panama because of the new government, which demanded an exorbitant annual residence fee to for me remain in the country on a permanent basis.

When I returned to Florida, Father Moyer, whom I knew from my days in Watertown, NY, called from the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont and asked me to join him there as his Curate. I began in Rosemont on 1st January 1997 and served there until July 2001.

Since July, 2001 I have served as Interim Rector of S. Clement's Church, Philadelphia, a venerable Anglo-Catholic parish in Center City that offers the mass and the divine office in the best Tridentine tradition. I have agreed to stay on at S. Clement's through the end of 2004.

In January, 2003, I was made Honorary Canon of St. Peter's Cathedral in the Diocese of Koforidua in the Church of the Province of West Africa and the Archbishop's Personal Commissary to the USA. Currently I am a member of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, an Associate of the All Saints Sisters of the Poor, a Priest of the Holy House of Walsingham, and the American Chaplain-General of the Society of Mary.