Father Robert Labrie and Father Richard Casey named senior priests

Two priests, veterans of multifaceted ministries over their restive years of ordination have been granted senior priest/retirement status by Cardinal O'Malley.

Father Robert G. Labrie

A Peabody native, Father Labrie attended the archdiocesan seminaries at Jamaica Plain and Brighton and was ordained by Cardinal Cushing at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross on Feb. 3, 1964.

Immediately after his ordination he was named an assistant at Our Lady of the Rosary Parish in Stoughton; his next assignment was as an assistant at Sacred Heart in Middleborough. In 1966 he was appointed assistant at St. Anthony of Padua in Shirley and in 1967 as assistant at St. Jean Baptiste (French Personal Parish) in Lynn. The following year he was named assistant at St. Louis de France (French Personal Parish) Lowell and in 1980 he became chaplain at Malden Catholic High School in Malden.

Four years later, he was appointed associate at St. Mary, Waltham and in 1988 returned to familiar territory at Lynn where he was named associate at St. Jean Baptiste. He moved a short distance to neighboring Marblehead as parochial vicar of Our Lady Star of the Sea parish from 1991 to 1993. In the Fall of 1990 he was granted a sabbatical at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.

Bernard Cardinal Law named him pastor of St. Louis de Gonzague (French Personal Parish) in Newburyport on Aug. 17, 1993 where he served until 1997.

In addition to the degrees granted by the seminary, Father Labrie also holds a masters degree in counseling from Boston State College (now integrated into UMass-Boston).

More recently Father Labrie has added to his curriculum vitae almost 17 years of experience as a hospital chaplain: an assistant chaplain at St. Elizabeth Medical Center, Brighton (1997-1999); Chaplain, Caritas Norwood when he also lived in residence at St. John the Evangelist in Canton (1999-2003); and most recently at Northshore Medical Center, Salem where he lived in residence at St. James Rectory in Salem (2003-2014).

Father Labrie has earned high marks during his many years as hospital chaplain. Often we think, quite rightly, of the immediate recipients of a chaplains' hospital ministry, namely the patients. Equally important to the chaplain are family, friends and visitors as well as the professional support staffs of hospitals. In some sense all of these are his parishioners. And Father Labrie took care to make sure that all his "parishioners" received his pastoral care.

Father Richard L. Casey

Father Richard L. Casey was born in Belmont and completed seminary formation at the archdiocesan seminaries in Jamaica Plain and Brighton. Following his ordination on Feb. 10, 1965 by Cardinal Cushing at Holy Cross Cathedral he has served in many archdiocesan parishes; and his nearly 50 years of ordained service has been, save three years, entirely in those parishes.

In his first 22 years of priestly ministry he served either as an assistant or associate at the following parishes St. Denis, Westwood (1965-1967); St. Matthew, Dorchester (1968-1969); Immaculate Conception, Marlborough (1969-1973); St. Agatha, Milton (1973-1975); and St. Therese of Lisieux, Billerica (1978-1987); during the years 1975-1978 he was Chaplain at Cathedral High School and was in residence at Cathedral Rectory.

In 1987 he was named pastor at St. Ann Parish in Gloucester; and in 1995, pastor at St. Mary Parish in Foxborough.

In 1997 he was granted a sabbatical which he took at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind.

For more than a decade between 1998 and 2009 he served the archdiocese as a member of the Emergency Response Group and he was administrator in each of the following parishes during those years: Sacred Heart, Middleborough; St. Julia, Lincoln; St. Joseph, Lowell; St. Zepherin, Wayland; St. Monica, South Boston; St. Augustine, South Boston; St. Ann, West Newbury and St. Anne, Littleton.

In 2009 he took on the responsibility, once again of pastor, this time at St. Anne, Littleton, where he had previously been administrator for six months in 2009. With the creation of the collaborative of St. Anne, Littleton and St. Catherine of Alexandria, Westford, Father Casey was granted senior priest retirement status on June 1, 2014.

He will live in his own residence on Cape Cod in his retirement.