Requiescat in Pace — Rev. Kenneth Baker, S.J.

A Requiem Mass will be offered for Rev. Kenneth Baker, S.J. tomorrow morning, Friday, August 14, at 8:00 AM at Saint Joseph Church in Tacoma. For a few brief months in 2011, he was our interim pastor at Saint Rita Parish. When he celebrated his first Mass with us on the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, he began his homily by confiding that it was the first time he’d celebrated the Mass in a language other than Latin in perhaps twenty years.

I found him to be a kind pastor and a brilliant intellect.

Rev. Kenneth Baker, S.J., entered the Society of Jesus in 1947. He studied theology at the University of Innsbruck, Austria and was ordained there in 1960. He taught philosophy and theology at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington from 1961 to 1978. In 1970 he briefly served as president of Seattle University.

He was editor of the Homiletic & Pastoral Review from 1971 to 2010 and, as editor emeritus, he continued to write for the magazine. In 1975, he became president of Catholic Views Broadcasts, Inc., which produced a weekly 15-minute radio program that aired on 50 stations across the United States.

He was the author of numerous books, including the monumental three-volume catechism Fundamentals of Catholicism (Ignatius Press, 1982).

Although he was a Jesuit priest, he worked with the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter for decades, first in New Jersey and then in Washington State. He was instrumental in establishing the celebration of the Vetus Ordo in Tacoma.

Father Baker passed to God on the feast of the Transfiguration, at the age of 96.