Father Lawrence Malcolm, pastor of St. Gerald Parish, Oak Lawn, is pictured in the parish’s adoration chapel May 17. (Karen Callaway / Catholic New World)
He is: Father Lawrence Malcolm, pastor of St. Gerald’s in Oak Lawn; former pastor of St. Daniel the Prophet. Ordained 40 years ago in the turbulent 1960s. “I’m sitting here in my cassock. This is what I wear in the parish. This is what we were given at the altar [at ordination]. We weren’t given a suit. My big thing is I don’t mind new things coming if they work, but I hate to see the traditions go. Why give them up without a reason?” Growing up: “I’m the oldest of six; an altar boy. Dad was a bricklayer, my grandfather was a bricklayer, and my great-grandfather was a bricklayer. My father used to come home with his trowel and say ‘If any of my sons take this up, I’ll …. I’m not working for you guys to be bricklayers.’” He is from “way up on the Northwest Side in Immaculate Conception Parish, run by the Passionists. I didn’t meet a diocesan priest until I went to Quigley. In seventh grade we went on a trip to [the Passionists’] minor seminary in Missouri. I had the worst time in my life. I got chased by a bull that made me jump over an electrified fence — I never wanted to see that place again. I guess God didn’t want me to be a Passionist.” He says he was tricked into priesthood. “At the end of fifth grade a priest came in and challenged us to get up every morning that summer for Mass, and he’d give us a prize. I just lived a block from church, so I got up every morning and didn’t even notice the priest was transferred in mid-summer. Something happened. I began to like going to Mass.” Challenges/style: “After ordination I was sent to a parish with 1,800 families. There were five priests. Now I’m in a parish with 2,500 families with ‘one and a half’ priests. “The best pastors I’ve known spent the least amount of time administrating. I follow that policy. I’ve taught in every grade in the school during my 40 years. The students keep my mind fresh and aware. I love it.” Prayer: “Morning is the best time; a halfhour before Mass.” St. Gerald’s has the third adoration chapel he’s helped open. “When I can, I sneak in — to just be there.” Hobbies: He’s a baker. “I’ll turn 40 or 50 pounds of flour into bread, pizza bread, coffee cakes, stuff for parish bake sales and for soup night. I worked in the seminary bakery under Sister Lamberta.” And he farms. “I’ve had big gardens at St. Theresa in Palatine, and St. Daniel the Prophet. St. Bede’s I read up on vertical gardening. I filled up all the freezers and it was still August. Then the sisters at St. Bede’s began to turn the vegetables into soup for shut-ins and we had Lenten Soup Nights. That’s how the whole soup thing began — from too many vegetables!” Reading: “I liked ‘The Shack,’ but ... the author has no use for organized religion. I just finished ‘Brooklyn,’ a novel by Colm Toibin, about an Irish girl coming over in the ’50s. Now I’m reading ‘Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.’ by Diarmaid MacCulloch.” Favorite saint: “I was named for St. Lawrence because my mother wanted me to have a sense of humor.”