By Rita McInerney

The Glenmary Research Center for the first time has a non-Glenmarian as director. She is Sister Mary Priniski, an Adrian Dominican familiar with the work of the center.

Sister Priniski said she accepted the offer to serve as interim director when asked by Brother Terry O’Rourke, vice president of Glenmary Home Missioners. She fills the post left vacant when Father Lou McNeil began a sabbatical April 26.

“I had worked with the Glenmarys since moving South,” the native of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula said. “I had worked with Father McNeil. I was no stranger to Glenmary or to the research center.”

She came to the Glenmary Center on Piedmont Avenue after 13 years with Connective Ministries, a Southern-based organization which works with grass-roots communities and congregations to “bring together faith with the struggles of poor people.” Members include Catholics, AME Zion, Methodists, Baptists and Native Americans. The group last year moved its headquarters to Birmingham, Ala., from Rock Hill, S.C.

The Glenmary Research Center moved to Atlanta from Bethesda, Md., in 1982 with Glenmary Father Bernard Quinn as director. The center was founded in 1966 to serve the research needs of the church in rural areas, the special province of the Glenmarys.

The congregation of priests and brothers was found in 1939 by Father William Howard Bishop to minister in the rural South and Appalachia. One of Father Bishop’s goals was to improve the lives of the people, whatever their religion or lack of, in these regions. The Glenmarys came to work in the archdiocese of Atlanta in 1960 after Bishop Francis E. Hyland and Father Clement F. Borchers, superior general, signed an agreement that Glenmarians work in the North Georgia counties of Lumpkin, Towns, White and Union.

Sister Priniski began her work at the research center April 12. In late May, Father Bob Dalton, president of the congregation, came to Atlanta from the Glenmary headquarters in Cincinnati, for an advisory board meeting that included planning a full schedule of projects for the next year.

According to Sister Priniski, plans include putting together a study guide on Mission to Rural America, the story of Father Bishop. Also in the “talking stage” is a book based on the study of the future of religious orders in the United States. The study was made in 1992 by Vincentian Father David Nygren and Sister Miriam Ukeritis, CSJ. Such a venture, Sister Priniski says, would include the “voices of people missioned to,” including rural people, African-Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans.

Sister Priniski earned her Ph.D. in theology with a specialty in cross-cultural mission at the Union Institute in Cincinnati.

Also new to the center is Leslie Grant, the administrative assistant. She brings organizational and communication skills and an extensive background in computers gained in the corporate world. She will supervise temporary workers to be hired as the workload demands, handle business affairs of the center, and design and promote brochures on new publications.