By Gia Myers • Posted May 12, 2025

This is the fifth in a series of five profiles of the men to be ordained new priests for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia on May 17.

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Brother Richard Withers, 70, says he never wanted to be “a trailblazer.”

Yet he became the first hermit, living a solitary life of prayer and devotion to God, in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in 2001.

Now he is about to become the first hermit priest in the archdiocese with his ordination to the priesthood by Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez on May 17 at 10 a.m. at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul in Philadelphia.

Brother Richard is significantly older than his classmates at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, and he finds encouragement in the story of Moses, who started his ministry at age 80, as the Bible recounts in the Book of Exodus, chapter 3.

Brother Richard was born in California’s San Fernando Valley to father Robert, a mechanical engineer, and mother Ida, who was an elementary school teacher and then homemaker.  He’s the third oldest of their seven children.

The family moved to Cherry Hill, N.J., his mother’s hometown, while the children were young.

Brother Richard and his siblings were raised “culturally Jewish,” he said, celebrating only Passover and Hanukkah since his mother was Jewish and his father was a non-practicing Catholic.

As a young adult Brother Richard aspired to a career as an environmental photographer and he studied at Stockton State College, now Stockton University, in South Jersey.

After meeting a community of Catholic lay people in Camden around that time, he converted to Catholicism in 1975 at age 20.

Brother Richard says he was drawn to the Catholic Church through to his great love for the Mass.

“I couldn’t get enough,” he said of the Catholic liturgy. “There’s something deep in the Jewish soul that craves real worship.”

He also encountered “a sense of presence” in the Eucharist, which parallels God’s gift of manna in the desert, the miraculous bread-like substance given to the Israelites as referred to in Exodus 16.

“Many Jews who convert to Catholicism say they’ve never felt more Jewish in their lives,” he said of the fulfillment he found in the Catholic faith.

After becoming Catholic, Brother Richard soon felt a call to religious life. He considered the priesthood and several religious orders, though none felt compatible at the time.

In 1983 he started living as a hermit, a life marked by solitude and contemplative prayer, and he found inspiration in the spirituality of the Desert Fathers, early Christian hermits who lived in the Egyptian desert in the  third century.

“It was the simplicity,” he said, that drew him to the hermetic lifestyle.

He bought an abandoned North Philadelphia rowhouse in 1991 for $1, doing most repairs to the house himself and building his own furniture.

After a revision to canon law, the religious law governing the Catholic Church, Brother Richard began petitioning to make public vows as a hermit to the Archbishop of Philadelphia.

He was approved by Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua in 2001 and became the first diocesan hermit in the archdiocese.

Brother Richard moved to Coatesville in 2011, fixing up another abandoned house as his new hermitage, though he still felt a longing for the priesthood and to celebrate the Catholic liturgy he so loved.

Archbishop Pérez granted Brother Richard the opportunity to study at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in 2019 to become a hermit priest, not assigned to a parish, but able to celebrate Mass and confer sacraments wherever needed, while still living a contemplative life of prayer.

At the ordination Mass, Brother Richard’s priestly vestments will be placed upon him for the first time by Msgr. Kevin Lawrence, pastor of St. Andrew Parish in Newtown, Brother Richard’s one-time home parish.

The names of his favorite saints who will be chanted in the Litany of the Saints at ordination include St. John of the Cross, a Spanish priest, mystic, and Carmelite friar; and St. Macarius of Egypt, a prominent monk among the Desert Fathers.

On May 18 at 10:30 a.m., Brother Richard will celebrate his first Mass as an ordained priest at Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Coatesville, where he served while in the seminary.