As the youngest of 14 children, what Father Peter Richards learned growing up on the Iron Range in Biwabik in northeast Minnesota has helped him minister to Catholics as a priest in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for the past 25 years.
“I grew up in a big, sloppy family and I’m just a pastor of a big, sloppy family,” said Father Richards, 56, who currently leads Our Lady of the Lake in Mound. “You just learn to associate with, and to love, and to be patient with all kinds of different personalities and people.”
Inspired as a college student by the idea of priests being servant leaders, Father Richards has gone on to pastor four parishes since his 1998 ordination. In all his assignments, he said he’s appreciated having the support of staff and parishioners, as well as his brother priests in the Companions of Christ, a fraternity of diocesan priests and seminarians in the archdiocese.
Father Richards first considered the priesthood as a junior at St. John’s University in Collegeville, when he surrendered his life to God. But he still felt called to marriage.
Four years later, while serving with the Army ROTC and working at a residential treatment center for troubled youth, he was invited to a Called by Name dinner by the late Archbishop John Roach. There, he became convinced he should apply for the seminary. “After that, it wasn’t like it was a lightning bolt,” he said. “It’s just this is the way the Lord wants me to live out my life as a Catholic.”
At that time, he belonged to the Community of Christ the Redeemer, a West St. Paul Catholic covenant community, and became familiar with the Companions of Christ.
“I just knew that I didn’t want to be walking the priesthood and life alone,” he said, adding that the Companions’ dedication to transparency and accountability challenged and appealed to him.
Father Richards’ teaching parish, Holy Redeemer in Montgomery, helped form him as a priest and showed him how parishes run, he said, adding that parish support has been a common thread through all his assignments. “They want me to be a good priest.”
During his first assignment at Mary, Mother of the Church in Burnsville, the late Father Eugene Tiffany, pastor at the time of All Saints in Lakeville, mentored the new priest.
“They say that in marriage the first three years are the hardest, and that probably applies to priesthood too, so to have Father Tiffany there, a seasoned pastor who wasn’t critical of me and he gave me very good advice, helped me through some difficult things,” Father Richards said.
Father Richards took the guidance he received to his next three parishes where he served as pastor: St. John the Baptist in Dayton, St. Albert in Albertville and St. Michael in St. Michael.
Father Richards said he’s still learning — currently, from a program called the Amazing Parish, which helps pastors lead their parishes more effectively as fathers, rather than CEOs.
“It’s helped me not to feel alone as a pastor,” he said. “It’s involving a lot more people in the leadership and bringing more cohesion to the whole parish.”
Considering his next 25 years, Father Richards said he’s open to where the Lord calls him but believes he’s in the right place: Growing in a parish together with the community and reflecting on how the parish can “be more evangelistic.”
(Editor’s note: This was updated July 7 to correct the parish where the late Father Eugene Tiffany was pastor at the time he mentored Father Richards.)
