Father Terry W. Young, for 15 years principal at St. Pius X High School, the archdiocesan high school, has received his first appointment as pastor. He will serve in that capacity at St. Benedict’s Church in Duluth beginning in June.

Father Young completed his work at St. Pius at the end of the 1991 school year. He resided at his new parish for a short time before leaving for a year of prayer and study at the Institute of St. Anselm near Margate on England’s southeast coast.

He will be the second pastor at St. Benedict’s, which was founded in July, 1987, with Father Joseph Peacock as first pastor. The parish serves a rapidly developing area of northeast Fulton County and now has a membership of 1,300 families.

A native of Baltimore, Father Young, 52, joined the diocese in 1968. As a seminarian at St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore, he was assigned to Immaculate Heart of Mary parish, Atlanta. After ordination as a transitional deacon, he served at St. Thomas More parish in Decatur.

He was ordained to priesthood at IHM by Archbishop Thomas Donnellan on May 6, 1972. His first assignment was as assistant pastor at the Church of the Holy Spirit, Atlanta. He remained there until being named assistant principal at the now closed St. Joseph High School. Three years later he was named principal at St. Pius.

As fourth principal at the high school, Father Young was responsible for starting the campus ministry department. During his 15 years there, the high school added a media center, performing arts center 400-seat auditorium, computer lab and classrooms. He was also instrumental in planning for the Donnellan Center for athletic and alumni programs.

In a tribute printed in The Georgia Bulletin shortly after Father Young’s departure from St. Pius, Father Richard Lopez, religion teacher at the high school, said “it was under his gifted leadership the school gently sailed through some incredible storms of transition that could have wrecked the only diocesan high school forever.”

In closing the tribute, Father Lopez said that “for 15 years he has not shrunk from his duty to decide, nor has he refused to accept the ‘flack’ decisions have, from time to time, brought him.”

Father Young received his bachelor of arts degree from St. Mary’s College in Baltimore and his master’s in divinity from St. Mary’s Seminary and University. He did graduate work in special education at Loyola College in Baltimore.

He taught special classes in the public schools of Baltimore and the state schools in London for several years.

--Rita McInerney