Priest's ministry to widows, widowers arose from his own experiences

Published: 2008-01-04

OCEAN CITY, Md. (CNS) -- Father Richard Smith has walked the heart-rending journey that's familiar to every new widow and widower. "The old story is everybody is around you through the funeral and you're oblivious to it," Father Smith recalled. "You leave the grave site and go to a lunch or something; then the people have to go back to their lives. In a couple of days you realize you're alone." Father Smith, an associate pastor at St. Luke-St. Andrew Parish in Ocean City, in the Diocese of Wilmington, Del., was married and widowed before he entered the seminary. It's a personal experience he brings to his priesthood that helps him understand the feelings of the members of a prayer group he started for widows this fall at St. Andrew's. "It's a spiritual gathering," Father Smith told The Dialog, Wilmington's diocesan newspaper. Participants bring a brown-bag lunch; there's coffee, then prayer and conversation.

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