Fr. Francis Aloysius Morrison

Francis A. Morrison was born on April 26, 1917, in Philadelphia, PA, the fourth of five children. He had two brothers and two sisters. A terrible tragedy struck their lives on March 21, 1925, when their mother passed away. Francis was about 8 years old at that time.


The family had moved to Baltimore by 1930. He started high school in 1931 and one of the those with whom he became friends in that first year of high school was Martin Flahaven, who also became a pastor at St. Peter’s.

The war was coming and on October 16, 1940, he registered for the draft. The draft record notes that he was a divinity student at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore and that he was six feet tall and weighed 170 pounds. The Federal Census of 1940 indicates that he had by this time completed 5 years of higher education, was living in Catonsville, and was 22 years of age. At some point his draft record was updated to reflect his new assignment at St. Mary’s Rectory, 5502 York Road.

He was ordained at the Basilica of the Assumption on June 8, 1943.

Fr. Morrison served at St. Mary’s in Govans, Immaculate Conception in Towson, and St. Mary’s Church in Pylesville before coming to St. Peter’s in Libertytown. He arrived at St. Peter’s on October 2, 1965, replacing his high school friend, Fr. Martin Flahaven who, coincidentally, moved to St. Mary’s in Pylesville.

One of the strengths of Fr. Morrison’s pastorate at St. Peter’s was his involvement with the local community. As examples of this, he participated in a 1966 Thanksgiving Eve service at Libertytown Methodist Church. In 1969 the community Thanksgiving Eve service was held at St, Peter’s to which local communities were invited and in which the pastors of the Walkersville United Church of Christ, the Woodsboro Lutheran Church, and Libertytown Methodist churches participated.

On Tuesday, December 22, 1970, a Live Nativity pageant was held at St. Peter’s. A number of local churches participated in the program, each church providing costumes, properties, and animals for its part in the pageant, along with church members to play the various roles. The pastors narrated their parts of the pageant and a choir of members of all the church choirs sang carols. The participating churches were Mt. Pleasant, Mt. Zion, and Silverhill United Methodist Churches, the Unionville-Libertytown United Methodist Churches, Linganore and Keys Chapel United Methodist Churches, Mt. Pleasant United Church of Christ, and St. Peter’s.

Fr. was also active in the Libertytown Fire Department, being elected one of the two chaplains of the department at its annual meeting in December 1969. The other chaplain elected was Rev. Daniel Henderson of the Libertytown Methodist Church. He attended other annual meetings, offering invocations and benedictions at those meetings.

He was also a member of the Community Relations Board of the National Alliance of Businessmen in his capacity as chair of the Frederick County Ministerial Association, the goal of which is the employment of minority group and disadvantaged American and to provide skills training as needed.

On Saturday, June 8, 1968, Fr. Morrison marked his 25th Anniversary of Ordination. A Mass was celebrated at St. Peter’s at noon and that was followed by a reception in the church hall. Another anniversary that was marked was the 100th Anniversary of the Second Church, in 1970. On June 21, 1970, an Anniversary Mass was celebrated by His Eminence Lawrence Cardinal Shehan, Archbishop of Baltimore. Following the Mass, dinner was served to all at the Libertytown Volunteer Fire Department.

One of the hardest decisions that was made during Fr. Morrison’s time at St. Peter’s was to close St. Peter’s School, which was one of the county’s oldest parochial schools. It became obvious that the tuition costs and money that the parish could provide could no longer economically sustain the school. The school was incorporated into the Archdiocese school system in 1965 with the official name changing to St. Peter’s School from Notre Dame Academy of Frederick County. Since that time, the School Sisters of Notre Dame was no longer financing the operations of the school and the parish was absorbing the costs formerly paid by the religious order. This approach being financially untenable, the parish council concurred with the recommendation to close the parish school at the end of the 1969-1970 school year.

In February 1973, Fr. Morrison was moved to Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Woodlawn. One year later he passed away, February 25, 1974. He was the first of the 5 siblings to pass away, at the age of 57. A Funeral Mass was said at Our Lady of Perpetual Help at 10:30 AM on Friday, March 1st, following which he was buried at New Cathedral Cemetery, Baltimore MD.


Other Key Moments in St Peter's History

Monsignor John A. Dietzenbach

Image
John Augustine Dietzenbach was born on December 9, 1951 at West Union, Iowa, the second of six children. He grew up on a family farm near Fort Atkinson, Iowa and attended St. Luke Church and school in St. Lucas, Iowa. After graduating from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa in 1974 with a BA double major in Business Administration and Philosophy, he attended St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Roland Park, Baltimore, MD. He graduated with a Masters of Divinity in Theology from there in December of 1978 and during his last year in the seminary, he sought incardination (the official acceptance by one diocese of a clergyman from another diocese) with the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Fr. John was assigned to All Saints Parish on Liberty Road in January 1979, where he remained through his deaconate ordination on May 24, 1980 and his ordination to the priesthood on November 29, 1980. In the summer of 1981 he was assigned to St. Elizabeth Parish on Baltimore Street where he remained for 5 ye
Read more

St. Peter’s Bicentennial

Image
The most recent key moment in St. Peter’s history is the commemoration of the parish’s bicentennial. 2021 marked 200 years since the establishment of the parish and the beginning of construction of our first church building, a stone chapel, on land donated by the Coale family. In September 1823, the newly completed first church was consecrated by Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal of Baltimore. To commemorate this milestone, a Bicentennial Committee consisting of 20 parishioners planned a number of activities beginning in September 2022 and culminating in Fall 2023. In order to carry out these plans without impacting the parish’s normal operating budget, Bicentennial fundraising efforts were undertaken. Early on, a logo was developed showcasing the current church with the extant portion of the second church prominently featured. This logo was used in the development of a Bicentennial ornament, which has been sold over the past year. A ticketed Bicentennial Ball dinner dance is planned f
Read more

Deacons John Martin, Jerry Jennings and Michael Dvorak

Image
“I’ve come to serve.” That was the response called out by John Martin in May 2009 and by Jerry Jennings and Michael Dvorak in May 2011 as each was called forward from the pews of Baltimore’s Cathedral of Mary Our Queen to be ordained as deacons by then-Archbishop (now Cardinal) O’Brien. When asked today to talk about their roles as deacons assigned to St. Peter’s, they each summarize by saying “I’m here to serve.” Both Deacon John and Deacon Jerry have served in our military, and Deacon Mike works for the Employee Assistance Program for the Department of Defense.  Deacon John was in the U.S. Air Force and Air Force Reserves, while Deacon Jerry is a retired U.S. Army Colonel.  All are husbands and fathers, and Deacons John and Jerry are grandfathers. They each talk about how blessed they are to serve in our parish which values its deacons and allows them to exercise their full diaconal ministry through the liturgy, sacraments, preaching and outreach ministries.  Over the years, our d
Read more

Fr. Martin W. Flahavan

Image
 Fr. Flahavan was a man of varied talents.  One example was a Marian Children’s Missal with Martin Flahavan featured in photos celebrating Mass.  This Missal, published by the School Sisters of Notre Dame, was designed to help children prepare for their First Communion, and was widely purchased throughout the country by parents for their children in the 1950’s and 60’s. In all the parishes he was assigned to, he was perpetually active doing something to advance the mission of the Catholic Church.   At St. Peter’s, where he was assigned from 1961 to 1965, he constructed a basketball court, developed the largest Altar Boy Society in the history of St. Peter’s, revived the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, organized an Usher Society, began high  school and adult discussion groups in cooperation with the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (known to many of us as CCD), made major maintenance improvements to the church and (old) rectory, renovated the parish hall, and developed a new
Read more

Religious Educators of our Children Over the Years

Image
While the religious education of our children has always been the responsibility of their parents (and extended family), there is documented evidence that the Jesuits who visited Libertytown in early years of the Parish, and later the diocesan pastors, provided specific instruction to our young, prior to their receiving their First Holy Communion and Confirmation. Archive materials from the School Sisters of Notre Dame, however; provide us with our earliest window into the beginnings of formal religious education at St. Peter’s. From these records we learn that the religious women from that Order, beginning with Sr. Theophora Foley and Sr. Fidelis de Katow, moved into their new convent on October 25, 1892. This convent was adjacent to the school where they would be teaching – Notre Dame Academy (now occupied by the Parish office staff). Records don’t indicate how many sisters were teaching at the school at one time, but in 1935, the number of religious in the community were reduced t
Read more

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

Image
Catholics in Libertytown were blessed to interact with some of the major pillars of early Catholicism in the United States. For example, the first US bishop, John Carroll, was involved in the initial discussions about the possibility of a church in Liberty. Fr. John Dubois, who would go on to become Bishop of New York had ministered to Catholics here, as did Fr. John McElroy who completed our first church and later founded Boston College. Very notably, they also interacted with the first American born saint! Some eight decades before St. Peter’s would open the Notre Dame Academy, and a decade before our first church building even got underway, a young lady from Libertytown would benefit from the fact that the first free Catholic school for female education staffed by religious women in the U.S. opened here in her county. “Received the sum of twenty five dollars for three months advance payment for the board + tuition of Miss Sarah Coale,” reads a September 1811 receipt signed by Mo
Read more

Father John McElroy, S. J.

Image
The priest who saw to the completion of the first St. Peter’s church was one very busy Jesuit. He was also responsible for building other local Catholic churches and schools before moving onto important roles from Mexico to Massachusetts. John McElroy came to the US from his native Ireland as a young man in 1803. He was ordained a priest in 1817 at the age of thirty-five. He was sent to Frederick in 1822 to aid the ailing pastor of St John the Evangelist Church, Fr. Francis Maleve, S.J. the successor to Fr. John Dubois, S.S. After arriving, Fr. McElroy, S.J. stayed with Fr. Maleve until he passed away a few days later, on Oct 3, 1822. Fr. McElroy was subsequently named pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church. St. Peter’s was a mission of St. John’s, as was St. Joseph’s on Carrollton Manor. While here, Fr. McElroy continued to build the church in our community…both figuratively & literally. Fr. McElroy’s journal notes that he made his first visit to Liberty on Nov. 12, 1822, and
Read more

James McSherry Coale

Image
The building of the second St. Peter’s Church (dedicated in 1871, accidentally burned in 2004) was made possible by the generosity of the son of Richard and Catharine McSherry Coale who had donated the land and funding for our first church, dedicated in September 1823.   As our parish outgrew the original stone chapel, James McSherry Coale, son of Richard and Catharine, helped see to construction of a new brick church next to it. James was born in Libertytown on January 19, 1805, educated at Mount Saint Mary’s in Emmitsburg, and later studied law under Richard Potts of Frederick.   He was an Elector in the Electoral College for the 1836 and 1840 Presidential elections.   As noted in another Key Moment it was James, who had inherited the land where our church sits, who followed through in November 1867 on his late father’s intention that the 2 acres be transferred to the Catholic Church.   The “better late than never” transfer facilitated efforts to construct the larger church that the
Read more

Consecration of St. Peter’s First Church

Image
Jesuit records reflect that the building of St. Peter’s first church was initially overseen by the Jesuit pastor of Frederick, Fr. Maleve. When Fr. Maleve died in October 1822, his successor, Fr. John McElroy, S.J. stepped in to see the completion of Liberty’s Catholic church. St. Peter’s was consecrated on September 28, 1823, as recorded in the diaries of both Archbishop Maréchal and Fr. McElroy: “I set out for Liberty town and got out at Mr. Coales’s, an earnest and zealous man, and owner of all the land about the town. He built a fine stone chapel and intends to give land for a graveyard, and very likely, a presbytery, garden and pasture: great prospect for an ecclesiastical establishment." - Arch Bishop Maréchal diary entry September 26, 1823 [i] “On the 28th I blessed the church. A great crowd from the neighborhood, and singers from Frederick and a fortepiano. Mass with the deacon and sub-deacon. I spoke twice, first on dedication of the church and secondly on confirmat
Read more

Dedication of the Third Church

Image
“Woo-hoo!” shouted an excited parishioner, breaking the hush a few seconds after Msgr. Dietzenbach opened the doors. Perhaps a bit more vocal than the consecration 200 years ago of our first church, but no doubt very similar in sentiment to the consecration of our first church. Countless hours, lots of energy and significant effort went into making sure this most recent dedication was as flawless as possible. It was no small undertaking to arrange for a dedication liturgy involving a Cardinal, an Archbishop, 2 Bishops, more than 40 priests and deacons and a congregation numbering 800. Of interest, the youngest parishioner in attendance was Ava Folger, who was only 13 days old on the 7th of September and our most senior parishioner to witness the Dedication was Anne Morrissey, 104 years of age at the time. Two hundred years ago, in 1823, Fr. McElroy’s diary contained the following specifics concerning the procession preceding the liturgy of the consecration of the first church: “… s
Read more