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William Howard Bishop was born on December 19, 1885 in Washington, D.C. His mother was a lifelong Catholic, and his father, a rural physician from North Carolina, converted to Catholic Christianity. Interestingly enough, it was Cardinal James Gibbons who brought Dr. Bishop into the Church, the same bishop who baptized and ordained Servant of God Thomas Frederick Price of Wilmington, North Carolina, co-founder of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers.
As a young man, William attended Harvard College from 1907 to 1908, and then attended St. Mary Seminary in Baltimore, Maryland. He was ordained for the Archdiocese of Baltimore on March 27, 1915. He then studied at the Catholic University of America for two years before being assigned as pastor of St. Louis parish in Clarksville, Maryland.
Among the many gifts Fr. Bishop brought to his priesthood were clarity of vision, energy, and the ability to put his vision into reality.
As a young priest, he founded the Archdiocesan League of the Little Flower to help rural Catholic pastors, and in 1925 he established the Archdiocesan Rural Life Conference of Baltimore. From 1928 to 1933, he was the president of the National Rural Life Conference.
With his energy, clarity of vision, and determination, Fr. Bishop increased his knowledge base by taking courses in agriculture and the economic problems associated with agricultural occupations.
One thing he noticed as a young priest, was that vast areas of the United States had no official Catholic presence. In fact, in the late 1930s, more than one-third of American counties had no resident priest. This was true especially in southern states and the mountains of Appalachia, both areas noted for their abundance of poverty.
In 1939, Archbishop John Timothy McNichols of Cincinnati, Ohio, invited Fr. Bishop to found a community to help address the problems of “priest no-land” in the United States. Fr. Bishop was happy to oblige and founded a community of priests in Glendale, Ohio under the patronage of “Our Lady of the Fields.” By combining the place that the community was founded, and St. Mary, the order became known as Glenmary Home Missioners. In time, Brothers, Sisters, and lay persons became part of the Glenmary family.
Originally, the purposes of the new community of home missionaries were to establish an official Catholic presence in areas of the United States that didn’t have one, and to bring people into the Catholic Church. As time went on, however, Fr. Bishop added a third objective, that was, to help improve the moral lives of all the people where Glenmary served, regardless of their faith.
Fr. William Howard Bishop died in Glendale, Ohio on June 11, 1953.
