Pope Francis names Father Roger Landry a Monsignor

Boston, Mass., Dec 18, 2024 / 16:30 pm

Father Roger Landry is now Monsignor Roger Landry — but he says he’s not ready to abandon the title “Father” anytime soon.

Monsignor Landry, 54, the incoming national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States and a regular contributor to the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister publication,  said he got the news this past weekend. He made it public Tuesday morning.

He said the new title, which is an honor bestowed by the pope, “will take some getting used to,” adding that he prefers the simpler title he has had during his 25 years of priesthood.

“I really love being called ‘Father,’ which is an ever-present challenge, every time it’s used, to respond as a spiritual father in the image of God the Father and of my own hardworking manly dad. I think it’s the greatest title to which any man and priest ought to aspire,” he told the Register.

“But I anticipate those who have always known me as ‘Father’ or strangers who see me dressed in black, will still use it as the most natural vocative. I hope they do,” he continued. 

Monsignor Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, where he serves as executive editor of the diocese’s newspaper, The Anchor. The diocese sent a written statement to its priests this past weekend. It says:

“On November 14, 2024, Fr. Roger Landry was honored with the title Chaplain of His Holiness by the Holy Father, Pope Francis, for his distinguished service to the Church. Let us all wish Monsignor Landry hearty congratulations and best wishes.”

Monsignor Landry told the Register that Fall River Bishop Edgar da Cunha told him about his new title on Saturday.

Landry said he was surprised, because in 2014 Pope Francis announced he was limiting the pool of possible candidates for the title of monsignor to priests in the Holy See’s diplomatic corps and those who serve at least five years in the Vatican, in addition to diocesan priests who are at least 65 years old, as the Register reported at the time.

The only one of those categories that corresponds to Monsignor Landry is the diplomatic service, he said, “But after nothing happened after I worked for seven years as an attaché to the Holy See’s diplomatic corps as the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York, I figured I was safe!” 

Landry was born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, where he was valedictorian of his high-school class. He earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Harvard in 1992. He graduated from the Pontifical North American College in Rome in 1999, the year he was ordained a priest.

He served as a parochial vicar at parishes in Fall River and Hyannis before becoming a pastor in New Bedford and later at another church in Fall River.

For the past nine years he has worked in assignments outside of his diocese.

He served as attaché to the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York from 2015 to 2022, when Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, appointed him Catholic chaplain at Columbia University. He is completing his stint at Columbia this month.

During the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy in 2016 he served as a “Missionary of Mercy,” with authority from the Pope to offer absolution for sins normally reserved to the Holy See.

He served as ecclesiastical assistant to Aid to the Church in Need between 2021 and 2024.

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This past summer, Father Landry was the only priest to walk the entirety of one of the four National Eucharistic Pilgrimages. He carried the Body of Christ in a monstrance for long stretches on foot between New Haven, Connecticut, and Indianapolis, the site of the 10th National Eucharistic Congress in July — an experience he wrote about for the Register in August 2024.

He is the author of the February 2018 book “Plan of Life: Habits to Help You Grow Closer to God.”

His newest role is national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States, which he begins full-time in January 2025.

Monsignor Landry will run, from the organization’s offices in New York City and St. Petersburg, Florida, four societies that help the pope spread the Catholic faith: The Society for the Propagation of the Faith, which supports missionary work in 1,100 dioceses in Asia, Africa, the Pacific Islands and Latin America; the Society of St. Peter the Apostle, which supports vocations to the priesthood and religious life; the Missionary Childhood Association, which helps provide young people religious education, health care, advocacy and the necessities of life; and the Missionary Union, which prays for the missions and supports catechists across the world.

As Monsignor Landry looks forward to his new mission, he hopes that he will be seen for his priestly service foremost, he told the Register. “At the end of the day, I’m still just an ordained foot-washer given the privilege to proclaim the greatest news of all time.”