50 Years a Priest

Father Stephen Rowntree, SJ, entered the Society of Jesus at the age of 17. This year he is celebrating 50 years as a priest while serving in a ministry of prayer.

Father Rowntree was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, and raised in Virginia and South Carolina. In South Carolina, he lived in a town and a society that was rigidly racially segregated. The only racially integrated gatherings he attended were sponsored by the Catholic Diocese of Charleston. For him, this stimulated an interest in the Catholic Church’s teaching on race relations. He began reading back copies of America magazine (passed on by nuns who taught catechism in his parish).

Discerning his desire to become a college teacher and God’s call to become a priest, he immediately thought of the Jesuits: Jesuits were priests, many of whom also taught at Jesuit colleges and universities. The most prominent Jesuit he knew of was the editor of America, Fr. Thurston Davis. He wrote Fr. Davis, who directed him to the New Orleans Province’s vocation director. Father Rowntree met the Jesuits in person for the first time at Sacred Heart Parish in Augusta, Georgia.

He fondly recalls his novitiate and juniorate years (1961 to 1965), the years of the Second Vatican Council. He and his fellow novices were introduced to the scriptural and theological renewal from which the Council had emerged.

As is typical for Jesuits in formation, Fr. Rowntree studied philosophy, but for him, it became a true passion. He obtained a doctorate in philosophy from Fordham University before beginning theology studies at the Weston College School of Theology at Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was ordained a priest in 1975.

Father Rowntree taught philosophy at Loyola University New Orleans from 1976 to 1983. During his time at Loyola, he advised Jesuit scholastics in his role as director of the Center for Jesuit Academic Formation in New Orleans.

In 1993, Fr. Rowntree volunteered to help design a four-year English-language first studies program for African Jesuit scholastics. He was missioned to Zimbabwe in 1994 to teach philosophy and serve as the rector’s delegate at Arrupe College in the capital city of Harare, alongside fellow Jesuit Jubilarians Fr. John Stacer and Fr. Patrick Madigan. His Jesuit students were enthusiastic about their studies, including philosophy, and Fr. Rowntree described them as talented, hard-working future leaders of the Society of Jesus.

Upon his return to the U.S., he returned to Loyola for more than a decade, then served as associate pastor at Holy Name of Jesus Church in New Orleans.

From 2020 to 2024, he served at Holy Name of Jesus as a priest in residence. In 2024, he was missioned to a ministry of prayer for the Church and the Society of Jesus at St. Ignatius Hall in Florissant, Missouri.

Father Stephen Rowntree’s Reflection on His Jubilee

“God is love,” and the size of the material universe, 93 billion light-years in diameter, is an image for me of how great is God’s love revealed in Jesus Christ.

Romans 8:38-39 summarize for me the immensity of God’s love: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Thanks to family, friends, parishioners, fellow community members who have shown me such love and appreciation over the past ten years. As always, I “give the Lord glory” that all things in my life reveal God who is love.