IFTTT Autopost 
I’m especially eager to share this Friday’s mission hero because he was from the same neighborhood of Wilmington, North Carolina where I was pastor of the Basilica Shrine of St. Mary from 2006-2018. His name was Thomas Frederick Price.
Thomas, who was called “Freddy” as a child, was born on August 19, 1860, the eighth of ten children. His father, a newspaper publisher and former Episcopalian, and his mother, a former Methodist, raised their children in a strong Catholic home. In fact, when Freddy was a boy, he used to be an altar server at the old St. Thomas the Apostle Church on Dock Street for Bishop James Gibbons, the first vicar-apostolic of North Carolina. He also accompanied Bishop Gibbons, later Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, on his rounds throughout the vicariate.
In 1876, Freddy left home to begin studying to become a Catholic priest. The first ship he was on shipwrecked, but in 1877 he finally got to St. Charles Seminary in Catonsville, Maryland where he lived till graduation in 1881. That September, he entered St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore and graduated in 1886. On June 20, bishop Northrup ordained Freddy at St. Thomas in Wilmington.
From the time he was ordained a priest, Fr. Price demonstrated an incredibly strong work ethic, dedication, and clear vision. For him, North Carolina was his mission land. So, after serving as a pastor for a few years, he was given permission to begin a statewide evangelization program. He published a magazine called Truth and founded the Nazareth Orphanage in 1889.
In the summer months, he welcomed seminarians to join him in the home missions, and in 1902, he founded a missionary training house for seminarians. This training house was to prepare seminarians one day to work as “home missionaries,” that is, as missionaries working in the United States, specifically, North Carolina. In time, Fr. Price would get the nickname, “The Tarheel Apostle,” for North Carolina is often called the “Tarheel State.”
As time went on, however, Fr. Price began to expand his vision to include the whole world, and at the Eucharistic Congress held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1910, he met Fr. James Anthony Walsh (later a bishop). The two men had a similar vision, and this led to the founding of the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, more commonly called the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers. Eventually, three other groups would have the Maryknoll name: the Maryknoll Sisters; the Maryknoll Lay Missioners; and the Maryknoll Affiliates. Maryknoll, New York, site of the society’s headquarters, is near Ossining.
When the Society (as the Fathers and Brothers are often called) began, Fr. Walsh was selected to be the administrator, while Fr. Price got his wish of being with the first group of three Maryknollers to go to the foreign missions, China, in 1918. Because Fr. Price was 58-years old when he went to China, he had trouble learning the language and had some physical ailments. He died of a burst appendix on September 12, 1919 in Hong Kong. He is buried at Maryknoll, New York.
Thomas Frederick Price, along with James Anthony Walsh, are both called Servants of God by the Catholic Church. In downtown Wilmington, N.C. there are two historical markers on S. Third Street, one honoring Fr. Price, and the other honoring Cardinal Gibbons.
Today, the order founded by these two men, has missionaries all over the globe.
