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By Erika Anderson
DECATUR—Frank Richardson’s life changed forever on May
17, 1974. It was an unseasonably hot day in Dublin, Ireland, he remembers. In
his third-floor office, speaking with a co-worker around 5 p.m., he was blown
across the room when a car bomb exploded outside his building. It was one of
three car bombs, placed in Dublin and in nearby Monaghan, that killed 33
people. Rushing outside, he and his colleague witnessed firsthand the carnage
that resulted.
Twenty-seven years later, sitting in his roomy office at St.
Thomas More Church, Father Richardson said he never thought his life would end
up the way it has—that he would be the pastor of a parish in the United
States. But God had a plan for him, and he is grateful.
Growing up as the third youngest of 15 children, Father Richardson
said his family was poor.
“We didn’t have beds; we had mattresses on the floor. We
often had to use coats for blankets. We were so poor, even the mice got up and
left,” he added with a chuckle.
But what they lacked in monetary wealth, they made up for in
spiritual currency. His mother, who died in 1982, went to Mass every day.
“My mother was absolutely a saint and my father was a little
less so. He was a typical Irish father with all the ramifications that went
with that,” he said. “We said the rosary together every
night—reluctantly, but we did it.”
When he was 15, Father Richardson went to work in the insurance
industry. He would stay with the same company for 31 years.
Although he said he had thought about the priesthood “on and
off,” he pushed it to the back of his mind because he was “having too
good of a time.”
“I had a good social life,” he said, adding that he
owned a share in two race horses. “I loved to gamble. I loved
horses.”
When he was 28, someone gave him the book “Late Have I Loved
Thee,” by Ethel Mannin, about a man’s spiritual journey. It was a
gift that had a profound impact on Richardson.
“I saw so many similarities between myself and the main
character,” he said. “It stopped me in my tracks.”
He began questioning his life’s direction. Then he began to
walk down a different path—he started going to daily Mass.
Four years later the bombs went off in Dublin. It was an event
that would change the course of his life.
“It definitely shook me up,” he said. “I was very
uneasy. I would just walk around my office all the time—pacing. I began
drinking during my lunch hour, which I had never done in my life. I would go
and have a couple of pints and that would steady me for the rest of the
day.”
The managing director of his company noticed the change in his
colleague and sent him to the company doctor. Father Richardson later went to
see his own family doctor, who told him that the bombs did him “a
favor.” At the pace he was going, the doctor said, Father Richardson was
headed toward a breakdown. It was during that time, at what he calls the
“lowest point in my life,” that, on his knees in desperation, Father
Richardson made a promise to God.
“I said that if he made me well, I would give the priesthood
a try,” he said.
He began to take things easier.
“Within three months I felt great,” he said, adding that
it was a surging time in the insurance industry and he was earning more
responsibility and more money.
“I tried to forget about my promise to God,” he said.
“But I had to put my head on the pillow each night. Conscience is a
terrible thing.”
For the next 14 years, he enjoyed his successes, trying to ignore
God’s call. But one Monday, his conscience finally got the best of him and
he walked into his job and announced he was taking the week off. He drove to a
Cistercian abbey to spend a week.
“I remember sleeping a lot and spending time in church,”
he said. “But I walked out of there on Friday evening totally convinced I
was going to be a priest.”
Coincidentally that Sunday he noticed an ad in the local newspaper
that read “Would you like to be a priest in Georgia?” Apparently the
ad had been in the paper for years, but he had never noticed.
He called Msgr. Don Kenny, then vocations director for the
Archdiocese of Atlanta, and, in 1988, at the age of 46 entered the seminary at
St. John’s College in Waterford, Ireland. Though colleagues at first
thought he was playing a joke, he was serious about his vocation and was
ordained in 1993.
Though he lived a very social life prior to becoming a priest,
Father Richardson feels this is an advantage in his ministry.
“It’s very helpful in the confessional,” he said.
“I have told my story in every parish I have been in and I think people
have felt very comfortable looking to me for direction.”
Though many enter into their vocation directly out of college or
even high school, Father Richardson feels that there is a benefit to finding
one’s vocation later in life.
“I had been out in the world and had worked and had been
relating to people,” he said. “You can’t buy that. You
can’t learn that in books. You certainly reach a level of maturity and I
think the older you go in, the more certain you are.”
And Father Richardson believes in divine providence.
“God has a plan, and often we have to go through pain and
sacrifice,” he said. “But he brought me to my knees during the most
painful time in my life and I am grateful. I love what I do.” |
