Why I love my job
The Most Rev. Wilton D. Gregory, Archbishop
Roman Catholic Diocese of Atlanta
Sunday, December 14, 2008
What I do
Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory not only is the leader and public face of the 100-parish Archdiocese of Atlanta, but he also is a priest.
Karl Ritzler / Special
The Most Rev. Wilton Gregory, the Catholic archbishop of Atlanta, says ‘the people are the part of my job that I identify with.
“I am the CEO of the archdiocese and its corporate identity,” Gregory said, but being a pastor to the 750,000 Catholics in his charge is “the most attractive and personally satisfying part of my job. … I’m involved in the lives of people in their parishes, schools and the institutions of the archdiocese.”
He celebrates Mass daily somewhere in the archdiocese, and it is the archbishop’s job to confirm new members of the church and dedicate new buildings.
Besides his pastoral responsibilities, Gregory, 61, also oversees the administrative and ecumenical functions of his position.
“The archdiocese is a large corporate structure,” he said. “We have to live within budgets. The administrative responsibilities are heavy because the archdiocese of Atlanta is growing.”
The archdiocese has 100 churches and missions, 22 schools teaching more than 44,000 children, two hospitals, two homes for the aged and five charity offices. In 1956, there were just 18 churches and parishes.
In the larger world, Gregory has numerous obligations “which tug at my calendar.” He is in contact with other religious communities across North Georgia and frequently is asked to speak at Catholic events outside the archdiocese.
He also has national responsibilities as a former president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and sometimes makes as many as three trips a year to the Vatican. After all, he said, “The pope is my immediate supervisor.”
How I got interested in this
“I was a kid in Catholic parochial school in Chicago. The priest in that parish was a real hero of mine,” Gregory said.
He described the vocation of the priesthood as “an enduring attraction” and an “ongoing renewal.”
Gregory said his call was a realization over time rather than a sudden vision. “Very few have the experience of Paul the Apostle,” he said.
Best part of my job
“Being with my people — the pastoral dimension, clearly. Being with them at the sacraments and prayer,” the archbishop said. “The people are the part of my job that I identify with.”
Most challenging part
The work “related to my administrative responsibilities,” Gregory said, such as conflict management and resolution. “The desk parts are the least satisfying.”
He also must keep personnel “on target and enthused,” as well as dealing with “the challenge of trying to keep things within the budget,” he said.
“When I was thinking about becoming a priest, [the important part] was the priest part,” he said. “And so it remains.”
What people don’t know about my job
“I pretty much take this job home. It’s a 24/7 job,” Gregory said. “It’s like the commitment of a marriage. You are married 24/7, work at it every day of your life, every hour of the day.”
He said it’s not the kind of job you can do for 40, or even 60 hours a week, “and the rest of the hours belong to me. … It’s a full-time responsibility.”
What keeps me going
“My relationship with the Lord,” Gregory said. “I really believe from the depths of my heart that this is what the Lord wants me to do. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
Preparation needed for job
“You have to be a man in love with the Lord, have a personal relationship with God,” Gregory said.
In addition, he said, a man must love people, have good communication skills and “be happy with himself. The happiest priests are those who have found a degree of comfort with themselves.”
He added that a prospective priest must know he’s not perfect, but must struggle to improve and have “an abiding sense of peace within their own hearts with their own humanity, … capacity to lead people in prayer and inspire people to love and pray in their faith.”
In the Catholic Church, only men are eligible to be priests, but many Protestant denominations ordain women to the clergy.
A Catholic priest must complete about four years of seminary, often after receiving a bachelor’s degree. Candidates are first ordained as deacons, which the church describes as a type of internship, and then be ordained as priests by a bishop.
Diocesan bishops and archbishops are appointed by the pope, who is given names by a body of bishops. “You don’t apply for it,” Gregory said.
Some bishops are appointed as assistants to other bishops, archbishops and cardinals and do not require such a wide consultative process.
Gregory graduated from Niles College, now St. Joseph’s College Seminary, of Loyola University in Chicago and St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, and he received a doctorate in sacred liturgy from the Pontifical Liturgical Institute (Sant’Anselmo) in Rome.
He was ordained a priest in 1973 and auxiliary bishop of Chicago in 1983. Gregory was bishop of the Diocese of Belleville, Ill., before Pope John Paul II appointed him the sixth archbishop of Atlanta in 2004.
- By Karl W. Ritzler, for ajcjobs. Got an interesting job that you love? E-mail your story to jobseditor@yahoo.com.
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