BATON ROUGE, LA

Fr. Cliff Hill, C.S.Sp. celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his priesthood on June 7, 2015 at St. Agnes Church in Baton Rouge, LA.  Ordained on June 3, 1965 by Bishop Dennis Durning, C.S.Sp. at St. Mary Seminary in Norwalk, Connecticut, Fr. Hill is currently living at St. Agnes Church which is the parish where he grew up.  A longtime member of the Physics Department at Duquesne University, he has been ministering to the local church of Baton Rouge since 2001.  We are happy to share some personal reflections that he wrote on the occasion of his Golden Jubliee.

“Fifty years later…it is remarkable that I am looking back once again at the very site of that First Solemn Mass, now “in residence” in the parish of my youth, living in the very spot where my vocation to the Spiritans began!

After that day in June 1965 came another year of graduate school in Texas and thirty years teaching physics at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.  The dream of being a priest in a community of religious and teaching in a college had come true!  Those thirty years were filled with a variety of experiences: a year teaching at a university in Taiwan, several summers working in a government lab while living and helping in a parish in Orlando, Florida, a sabbatical of study in St. Louis and Houston with a three-week trip to the Holy Land, all punctuated with weddings of relatives and students and funerals of family and friends.

I have been blessed by God with so much, so much on the receiving end of His love and care.  Life, Faith, Grace, loving parents and brother and his family, faithful relatives, friends and confreres, good health, rewarding work, and for 50 years, the gift of Priesthood.  I am deeply grateful for them all.  May I use these gifts to serve His people.”

Congratulations Fr. Hill and thank you for sharing your story and the gift of your priesthood!!!