Remarks: Dinner in Honor of Msgr. Andrew Baker
Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary
April 6, 2025
As we celebrate Msgr. Baker’s leadership of Mt. St. Mary’s Seminary, I am reminded of how it all began. The seminary was in search of a new rector and rectors don’t grow on trees. A few good candidates had begun to surface but none stood out. Someone suggested to me the name of one Msgr. Andy Baker. It was a eureka moment! Like many bishops I knew Msgr. Baker because he served on the Congregation for Bishops (it’s sort of like our ‘home office’). Also I had been with him in the recent past. Bishop Barres, the former Bishop of Allentown, invited me to serve as the homilist for the annual diocesan Red Mass at his Cathedral where Msgr. Baker was serving as Rector. On that occasion it became clear to me that Msgr. Baker was an integral part of Bishop Barres’ team.
So I had to wonder, would Bishop Barres ever let such an excellent priest go? Undeterred, I called him and asked for permission to consider Msgr. Baker as a candidate to become the next rector of the Mount. There followed a moment of silence. I wondered if he had hung up on me. But Bishop Barres responded like the true churchman that he is. “Give me a week,” he said, to pray about this and to talk it over with Msgr. Baker.” True to his word, one week later at almost the same hour, he called me. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Bishop Barres confirmed that there could not be a better choice. “Whatever he touches turns to gold,” said he. It is true as these past ten years of his leadership have proven over and over again. The seminary enrollment rebounded–we’re the largest seminary in the United States. New dioceses and religious orders were added, others returned because Msgr. Baker built up a relationship of trust with partnering bishops and vocation directors. He has attracted an excellent faculty, including priests from various dioceses, and this at a time when it is even harder for bishops to loan out their best priests. Msgr. Baker has worked closely with President Trainor and now President Joyce and has strengthened ties of cooperation with the university. Msgr. Baker also put the seminary on a firmer basis in canon law, overseeing the development of new bylaws, a seminary governance board, and sorting out the legal and financial issues unique to his institution. He exercised leadership on a national level in meetings with rectors and vocation directors in the United States. Mention has already been made of his leadership in establishing Rother House. Most importantly of all, under Msgr. Baker’s leadership, all the dimensions of priestly formation have been strengthened, and he and his co-workers have labored tirelessly to form the priest that the Church needs, now and into the future.
When Msgr. Baker shared with me that it was time for him to return to his home Diocese of Allentown, it was my turn to take a deep breath and be a churchman. Bishop Barres and now Bishop Schlert have been most gracious and generous and I can only imagine how happy Bishop Schrlet about his return. Let me just say, Msgr. Baker, what an honor it has been to work closely with you, and how indebted all of us are for your leadership in priestly formation. Most of all, you model in your own life what seek to instill in the lives of future priests, and for that reason the work you have done this past decade will live on here at the Mount and far beyond, ad multos annos! God bless you, Msgr. Baker and thank you!