St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, home to Father Richard.

By JT Thompson

Father Richard: Parochial Vicar at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, an enormous red brick building that towers over the center of Union Square. Established in 1869, the church has a square topped bell tower as big as a grain silo and a circular stained glass window that’s big enough to let an 18-wheeler pass through.

Father Richard greets me in his study, and gestures me toward the red leather wingback chairs by the window. He’s wearing a blue striped button down shirt above a pair of loose black slacks. Hanging on the walls of the small room, on dark wood paneling which looks like it dates from the 1970s, are several life size portraits of Catholic dignitaries wearing heavy red robes and imposing miters.

Father Richard turns out to be a sweet natured, enthusiastic, somewhat rambling conversationalist, full of jokes he’s probably said a million times, which he slips in whenever there’s an opportunity. He also likes to slip in stories about famous people. In his 60s, he has a light and boyish laugh which makes him seem younger.

I start out by asking him where he grew up, and how he ended up in Union Square.

He laughs and clasps his hands together.

“I haven’t grown up! But let’s see … home base is … well, I started out in Brighton. I was born in St. Elizabeth’s – which is where Michael Bloomberg was born – and then…did you see on TV about that car that crashed into the shop in Newton? No? Well, we lived in that building for a couple years. Then to Waltham.”

“My school? I went to the best parking lot in Waltham! We were taught by the Sisters of St. Joseph’s. I don’t want to namedrop, but one of the kids I played with on my street, David, was the son of Isaac Asimov. Did you know that Asimov wrote more books in more fields than any other author? And his autobiography! It’s something like 1500 pages long. It was him who popularized the idea of the robot.”

I ask Father Richard what he loved to do when he was a kid.

“I don’t know offhand … I suppose one thing – my father liked to travel. Take the car to New Hampshire, drive to Bedford for ice cream, to Arlington for a haircut. So we were always in the car on weekends.”

Father Richard is still an avid traveler.

“I’ve been to California, Texas, Washington, Canada, Florida. I’ve been on 35-40 cruises in different parts of the world. St. Petersburg. Estonia. Scandinavia. I took the Queen Mary around South America, as the chaplain. On the Queen Victoria, going around South Africa, I had the honor of hosting Desmond Tutu for lunch.”

I ask if his international travels changed his perspective on America.

“All travel is education. Exposure to other cultures, I’m sure…” He trails off.

“When I was young, my mother, she was from a Canadian family, several generations from New Brunswick, she used to take me to Canada every year. And the taxi back home, after she left me there, was very expensive!” He laughs.

Father Richard was ordained 41 years ago and has been in Union Square the last four.

“FDR’s secretary settled here in Somerville, do you know? He left her half his property in his will. But she predeceased him. And you’ve heard of the Winter Hill Gang? Well, Howie Winter goes for coffee at the Thurston Spa every morning. That’s right next to St. Anne’s, our sister parish.”

I ask him the “Are there things that you think make America great?” question.

“Obviously, plenty of things.”

A long pause.

“My father served as an air force mechanic in Blackpool in World War II and…let me think. He came back, I think on the Queen Mary…”

A short pause. Then he returns to the question.

“So, what makes America great … opportunities, and that. For education. Travel. Moving up the ladder, I suppose you’d say.”

He laughs. “My father was a janitor at City Hall in Waltham.”

He enthusiastically describes the education he was able to pursue after high school. A BA in physics from Brandeis. An MA in philosophy at Boston College. A PhD in educational media from Lesley. His doctorate thesis was on the effectiveness of computerized coaching for PSAT and SAT.

“My research showed that you could significantly improve your score within 10 hours. But I don’t like those tests. You can’t put a number on a person. Coming out of WWII, that Army mentality, to put a number on people, a rank. But there’s different kinds of intelligence … you could be gifted in music or art, and not show up in other areas. That’s true of a lot of geniuses, right? And our freedoms…the lack of restraint on speaking, and learning.”

I ask him what he likes about his job.

“The opportunity to help people. To deal with the important things of life. Yesterday, I had a baptism, a Shintu mother and a baby from Japan. That’s a history addressed in Scorsese’s movie Silence. Here’s a classic anti-foreigner story. Do you know about the burning of the Ursuline Convent here in Somerville? That was in 1834. The mob that burned it down was Protestant, they didn’t want the Catholics around. I think that was when the Know Nothing party was getting started, they were like the Ku Klux Klan. Ironically, the whole town became Irish and Italian. Their worst nightmare happened.”

“Now,” he says, smiling happily, “there’s 54-61 different languages at the Somerville high school. We have a community of Sikhs that sit and talk in the Square’s plaza.” Father Richard points out the window to a group of benches that are just visible across the intersection. “We have a Muslim center on Prospect, which was a former Knights of Columbus hall. Have you seen the signs in the T, ‘Learn about Islam’? That’s them.”

He grins at me. “You learnin’ something?

“Do you know the average age in Somerville? These days it’s 31.9. All these younger people moving in. That’s a different kind of animal, isn’t it?” he says a bit ruefully.

I wonder if they’re having trouble finding new parishoners.

“But that’s Somerville in the 21st century.” He laughs and spreads his hands.

“Saint Joseph’s welcomes everybody.”

You get the sense that they do.

Father Richard’s frequent and far flung travels, and his enthusiasm about Union Square’s diversity, speak to his lively curiosity about other cultures, and there is genuine warmth in his jokey geniality.