Richard Wise has been a priest for 25 years, but counting his preceding 11 years as a Religious brother in the Society of the Precious Blood he has been in parish ministry over 36 years.

At the jubilee luncheon for priests he says he “was just overwhelmed with the whole thing—overwhelmed with what the Lord has done in my life and through my life, the various gifts that people have received through the priesthood God has given me.” It has brought him to every segment of society “from Death Row through parish life, to working in various cultures and various environments, to being able to speak not only with the movers and shakers, but the outcasts, working with drug-addicted people, the homeless and the poor … that whole gamut.”

“It’s been fantastic,” said the pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Church in Blairsville. “To be a priest of God and do everything God has called me to do—wow!” Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan, who ordained him in 1981, “was truly a spiritual father,” Father Wise said. “Young priests need to be mentored, they need to be pastored. Archbishop Donnellan did that for me. He would just take me under his wing and make the corrections that were necessary. I never had an experience with him where I felt he was using his power. … He really set the tone for my priesthood.”

Two keys to his priesthood, he says, have been prayer and a sense of humor. “You have to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus,” Father Wise said. “If you look at the faults and foibles of the church, the scandals, the politics, you can lose heart. But if you keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, you can handle all that. You learn to repent of your own sinfulness and inadequacies. The more you experience that (forgiveness), the more you are able to share that forgiveness with other people.”

“The other thing is being able to maintain a sense of humor, to see the irony, to see humor all around you, not to take yourself too seriously.” For example, the pastor, who has made it through 10 surgeries in the last four years, says it’s helped him to relate better to the culture of a retirement area.” When you recognize your own weaknesses you see why God chose you to be a priest. God doesn't choose the perfect; he chooses the weakest so his glory can shine through.”

There was humor even in his call to priesthood. He went to Rome in 1975 for the Holy Year.“There were some kids in my parish I thought might have vocations to the priesthood,” he recalled. “I went to the tomb of St. Pius X and prayed for them. Within a year, I began to get drawn to the priesthood. I came to the Archdiocese of Atlanta and the irony is I found out that this diocese is under the secondary patronage of St. Pius X. I was assigned as a deacon to St. Pius X Parish and celebrated my first Mass at St. Pius X, so he really played a role in my vocation to the diocesan priesthood.”

He has served at St. Oliver Plunkett Church in Snellville, St. Philip Benizi Church in Jonesboro, and Corpus Christi Church in Stone Mountain, and was pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Decatur from 1988 until 2003 when he was assigned in Blairsville. Quietly during those years he served as a foster father to three young men from Ethiopia, who were in danger of being conscripted into the communist army or grabbed by rebel forces in their homeland. With the permission of the archbishops at the time, he accepted what he clearly felt was a call from God to help the family. Although he knew and admired Chicago priest Father George Clements, who served as a foster father and started a church-based program to place foster children, Father Wise says he doesn’t think it is something priests are frequently called to do. But in his situation, he says, he went directly from prayer before the Blessed Sacrament about being a foster father to meeting a woman on the steps of his church who pleaded for his help to save the lives of her cousins in Ethiopia. “This is something I did in response to God’s call,” he said.

The three young men, who came to the United States as teenagers, went to St. Pius X High School in Atlanta, while living first with a local family and later at the parish. All three graduated from Xavier University in New Orleans. All three have achieved graduate degrees, Father Wise said. They were exceptional youths, he said, and the parish housekeeper at the time, Lily Turnipseed, helped him enormously. He also reflects on the fact that in his 36 years of ministry, 25 have been spent in African-American parishes. “It was always a response to a request by the church. That was what God gave me to do,” Father Wise said.

“But I can tell you that serving in a culture that was not my own, and embracing a spirituality that was not my own, has added a depth to my priesthood.” Whether a mountain parish or an African-American community near Atlanta, he said he has tried to “embrace the spirituality that was here, make it my own, and serve.” “God is developing me even more. I am not so much getting older as getting richer—in the richness of God’s grace,” Father Wise said. “I am just happy being a priest. I really love it.”

- Biography from Georgia Bulletin, July 6, 2006