CINCINNATI (May 13, 2003)—Father Dan Dorsey was elected president of Glenmary Home Missioners at a gathering of all Glenmary priests and brothers April 28-May 1, 2003 in Nazareth, Ky. Father Dorsey has spent the last four years as first vice president of the community. Also elected to executive council: Father Bob Poandl as first vice president and Father Dominic Duggins as second vice president.

Before electing new leadership, Glenmarians, with the aid of an outside facilitator, identified the key issues facing Glenmary and the priorities they want leadership to address. For Father Dorsey, chief among these priorities is vocations.

Father Dorsey proposes devoting significant resources to vocation ministry in the coming four years, focusing both on recruiting vocations to this oathed community as well as recruiting qualified lay leaders as coworkers.

“If Glenmary is to remain mission driven, it must find men and women to ‘work in the fields,’” Father Dorsey said.

Glenmary currently has three students in formation—one from the United States and two from Africa. In addition, Glenmary has nine lay pastoral coordinators staffing missions in Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Virginia. More international vocation prospects from Africa, Mexico and Vietnam are being considered by Glenmary for future formation.

“I feel Glenmary needs to move ahead in the areas of vocations by maintaining our traditional outreach to men here in the United States while also being open to international vocations and being proactive in seeking lay men and women to serve the mission areas,” Father Dorsey said. “Those will be key goals in the next four years.”

Other goals include developing criteria for addressing how community life needs to adapt to an aging membership. Presently approximately half of the community’s members are in senior member status (retired). Inner-community goals—both spiritual and administrative—will also be priorities. These goals include, but are not limited to, improved communication within the community, more spiritual opportunities for the community as a whole, and ways to improve missioner/laity collaboration as Glenmary moves into new areas of Appalachia and the South.

“I am fundamentally optimistic about the future of Glenmary,” Father Dorsey said. “Our numbers are smaller and our walk a bit slower than in previous years, but we continue to be a faith community focused on the mission that has been entrusted to us—to reach out to the neglected and the forgotten.

“We are impelled by the Holy Spirit to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the forgotten regions of the United States,” he continues. “The next four years will not be easy and will bring challenges that are both difficult and unexpected. I approach these years with hope and see the challenges as opportunities.”

The new executive council members will be installed during the community’s Chapter Meeting on June 2, 2003.

Father Dan Dorsey, 52, a native of St. Louis, Mo., was elected first vice president in 1999. His new term as president extends to 2007. He served as pastor of two Glenmary missions in southeastern Arkansas before coming to leadership in 1999. In his 29 years of ministry, he also served in Cincinnati as Glenmary’s director of novices (1983-1990), and in Morehead, Ky., as associate pastor of a Glenmary mission serving six rural counties.

Father Bob Poandl, 62, a native of Metuchen, N.J., was elected to leadership for the second time in his 40 years as a missioner. His first term was from 1975-1979 as second vice president. His present term as first vice president extends until 2007. In addition to his administrative work, which included heading the vocation office from 1989-93, he has served missions in Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky and Texas. He has been pastor of Glenmary’s missions in Hugo and Boswell, Okla., since 1999. While in Oklahoma, Father Poandl has been instrumental in ministering to the large number of Hispanics living in the southeastern part of the state. He, like many Glenmarians and all the members of the new executive council, is fluent in Spanish.

Father Dominic Duggins, 60, a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, was elected to leadership for the first time. His term as second vice president extends until 2007. He comes to leadership as the director of Glenmary’s Development Office, a position he will retain while serving as second vice president. He has served missions in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Georgia, Texas, and Oklahoma in his 40 years as a home missioner. Father Duggins, who first entered Glenmary as a brother, has also served as associate director and director of students at the Glenmary House of Studies in Washington, D.C. (1981-1985). He came to Cincinnati in 1993 to work in Glenmary’s Mission Office and became director of the Development Office in 1999.