Adam John Parker

Ask Bishop Adam Parker what he expected the priesthood to be, and he will happily tell you he got it wrong. When he was young and first felt the call, he went around questioning every priest he could find about what the day-to-day life was actually like, picturing himself in parishes across the archdiocese for the rest of his life. He laughs about it now. Almost none of it turned out the way he imagined.

That mix of candor and good humor is part of why approachable is the word people reach for first when they meet him, and it holds up across the range of a life that has covered a lot of ground. Parker grew up in Severna Park, Maryland, was ordained for Baltimore, and expected a quiet parish life. Instead his path bent early toward the work of the wider Church. After a few years as a young associate pastor he became priest-secretary to Archbishop Edwin O'Brien, followed him to Rome when O'Brien was made a cardinal, and eventually came home to serve as Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia before he was ordained a bishop. Much of his week now is meetings, committees, and the ordinary business of keeping a large archdiocese running.

But it is the other half of the job that lights him up. Getting out to the parishes and schools, and especially confirming young people, is the part he calls fun. He does about thirty-five confirmations a year and clearly loves being around teenagers, their energy and their questions. That instinct for the person in front of him goes back to the beginning. He started out in a small parish in the mountains of Western Maryland, and of all the blessings and unexpected turns his priesthood has taken since, he says that was the only stretch that ever resembled what he thought being a priest would be. The people there still remember him warmly, and he has never stopped returning to them.

Away from the collar, he is easy company. He is a Ravens fan through and through, with the running joke that the team went to the Super Bowl twice while he happened to be living in Rome, so he has never once been in Baltimore for the excitement. He picked up Italian cooking during his years abroad and makes his own American version of Amatriciana, a peppery Roman pasta. Every year he takes a ten-day hiking vacation, logging fifteen-mile days in places like the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho, a habit that started in Switzerland where, as he puts it, he caught the bug. Kayaking the South River is his idea of a good afternoon. And no matter how full the calendar gets, the day starts the same way, with a Holy Hour and Mass he refuses to schedule around, the quiet time he says keeps him grounded. For a man who ended up almost nowhere he expected, he seems entirely at home.