Glenmary Home Missioners

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Glenmary Home Missioners (aka The Home Missioners of America) was founded in 1939 by Father William Howard Bishop, a priest of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, to serve what he termed “No Priest Land, USA.” At that time, he noted that more than one-third of the counties of the United States, mostly in Appalachia and the South, had no resident priest. Father Bishop foresaw that this area—then as populous as Canada, as large as Mexico and covering one-fourth of the United States—could be lost to the Church unless this vast priest-less “home mission” area was recognized by and designated a specific ministry of the Church.