Bishop-elect Martin will ‘begin with presence’ and ‘call us beyond ourselves’
Set to become the diocese’s fifth bishop in late May, Franciscan priest Michael Martin will have great influence over the direction and tone of the diocese for what could be more than a decade. Pictured here, he engages with students at Charlotte Catholic High School in his first visit to the diocese on April 9, the day the Vatican announced Pope Francis’ appointment of Bishop-elect Martin, who has years of experience in Catholic education. (Troy Hull | Catholic News Herald)CHARLOTTE — If you ask Bishop-elect Michael Martin what it means to be a Franciscan, he’ll tell you “trying to explain that in a sound bite or a tweet is impossible.”
Certainly, he’ll oblige with a short answer: “As part of the Franciscan religious order, we take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience as we carry out the work of the apostles in service of the Church.”
If you ask him again, you may get a longer answer that begins with a little humor, as do many moments with this Conventual Franciscan priest from Baltimore and Atlanta, who has deep roots in Catholic education and who is about to become the fifth bishop of the Diocese of Charlotte.
“I’ve heard it said that trying to understand Franciscan-ism is like trying to catch a cloud,” he says. “Just when you think you’ve grabbed it, it’s gone through your hands. …
“The Franciscan community is nuts-to-bolts. There is no one kind of Franciscan. There are lots of different personalities, and somehow the grace of the Holy Spirit allows us to live in relative peace and harmony and to carry out the commission of the Church. To me, that is one of the great gifts the Franciscan religious order gives to the universal Church: We don’t all have to look the same, we don’t all have to be the same, but rather, we can be united in mission even in our pretty extended differences.”
For the first time in 20 years, the Charlotte diocese will welcome a new bishop, this one during a three-day celebration, May 28-30, as longtime Bishop Peter Jugis retires and Bishop-elect
Martin takes the helm of the rapidly growing diocese. Heretofore, the diocese has hosted a few friars and sisters of the religious order, founded in 1209 by St. Francis of Assisi, to serve in some of its parishes and ministries, but not from the bishop’s chair – which will give the new bishop great influence over the direction and tone of the diocese for what could be more than a decade.
Bishop-elect Martin says he’s not one to come in and make sweeping changes, “I want to listen, listen, listen.” Plus, he says, he likes much of what he sees: a healthy and growing diocese with a warm welcome, holy priests, and many engaged Catholics focused on discipleship through a broad variety of ministries, reaching a broad variety of people.
At the same time, he says, “I realize the call to leadership. I do not shy away from that, or from making decisions that need to be made.”
To be effective, he says, he will “get out of the office” to get to know parishioners, priests and people in communities across the diocese’s 46 counties, with 530,000 Catholics living in the western half of North Carolina, “to hear your story of discipleship, and to know how I can serve you best.”
“I look forward to being with you,” he told Catholics and non-Catholics alike on April 9, when it was announced he would become the diocese’s next bishop.
“Being with you” is a consistent refrain.
“It’s hard to lead if you’re not first with people,” he says, people of all backgrounds, reflecting the message of “accompaniment” in faith that Pope Francis preaches.
As a Franciscan, he strives to “not just parrot the words” but to live the life that St. Francis modeled, which he notes “has endured for 800 years.” It’s a life of service, ministry to the marginalized, and evangelization that inspires people to carry on as disciples “living the faith and trying to build a new heaven on Earth as we’re all called to do.”
Bishop-elect Martin doesn’t officially start until his installation on May 30, but in the seven weeks since the Vatican announced the pope’s appointment of “Father Mike,” he has already visited with seminarians in Belmont and Ohio, students at Charlotte Catholic High School, people in several parishes, Catholic Charities’ food bank, and residents of Holy Angels’ community for people with disabilities.
At the same time, he’s meeting and mingling with diocesan staff – just this week calling for a briefing on plans to build a new cathedral – while also extracting himself from a parish he loves and pastored for the past two years, St. Philip Benizi, in Jonesboro, Georgia.
Then, of course, there are logistics of moving to Charlotte and planning his May 29 ordination at St. Mark Church. The event will host nearly 2,000 people, including some 500 priests, 15 bishops, one cardinal, nine parishioners from each of the diocese’s 92 churches, and dozens of family and friends – among them Atlanta Archbishop Gregory Hartmayer, who has known the bishop-elect for nearly 50 years and says he “highly recommended” to Pope Francis that he consider Father Martin for the Charlotte bishop’s job.
“I’ve been wrestling with living in two worlds, leaving Atlanta and coming here, but I am feeling my mind and my heart drifting north,” Bishop-elect Martin told the Catholic News Herald. “Some of the things that have really helped are the encounters I’m having with different people here. I have enjoyed very much the opportunity to get to meet so many folks in different walks of life who are trying to live the faith. That’s made me much more comfortable and given me even more excitement for what’s coming.”
“Still,” he acknowledges, “it’s a difficult transitional time. Lots of things are changing in my life.”
Chief among them, he and others say, will be leaving behind his Franciscan community of friars as he becomes a diocesan bishop, with an unrelenting schedule, and living alone, not in a communal setting as he has for 40 years. Nonetheless, he’s already making plans for how to recreate that communal spirit in his life here, he’s looking forward to “bishop’s school” in Rome, and he says he’s at ease because he knows God is with him.
FINDING ST. FRANCIS
FINDING ST. FRANCIS At 6-foot-1 and 250 pounds, he’s a big man with a big personality, an extrovert who draws energy from being with other people. Quick witted with a particular fondness for the Holy Spirit, he wears the gray habit of the Franciscans, which distinguishes him amid clergy who wear black clerics with a Roman collar.
Michael Martin grew up in inner-city Baltimore, in a tiny rowhouse with a wire-fenced backyard and an alley, a blue-collar upbringing at a time of civil unrest in the 1960s and 1970s.
His father sold medical supplies and his mother worked as an executive assistant, and together Don and Bev Martin raised four children, with Michael third in line and the only boy. “We were a normal Catholic family who went to church on Sundays. … There was a tremendous amount of love and goodness in my family and extended family.” (See more: The Martin family opens up about life with a future bishop).
Living just a mile from the all-boys Archbishop Curley High School, run by the Franciscan religious order, the Martins regularly had priests over for dinner. Their reverence and good humor appealed to Michael, so naturally that’s where he wanted to go to high school.
“They were bringing up young men of character,” says his older sister Jeanne Martin, who remembers how Michael worked to help with tuition.
As an eighth-grader, Michael had toured Curley High, where he’d had a chance meeting with a priest-teacher who would later become one of the most significant influences in his life: Father
Gregory Hartmayer, now the Archbishop of Atlanta.
“Michael is a great leader, he’s charismatic,” says Archbishop Hartmayer, who over the years would become a mentor, work colleague and close friend. “I find him to be a great homilist, a great teacher and great administrator, and so I think he brings to Charlotte a lot of talent and a lot of experience – and he’s very excited about coming to Charlotte and beginning to work right away.”
He so loved his high school experience, it inspired a 30-year career in Catholic education. “There was a spirit in that school of the Franciscans of love and community that I found attractive,”
Bishop-elect Martin recalls. “I recognized how my own education made such a difference in my life. I saw how my relationship with Jesus and my sense of the Church and community and of serving was all very much rooted in education. … There are so many wonderful opportunities in education to make that kind of difference, so I wanted very much to do that, too.”
So after graduation, at 17, he joined the Conventual Franciscan Friars Novitiate in Ellicott City, Maryland, to see if religious life was for him – a challenging transition.
A gifted homilist, Bishop-elect Martin “talks about things that happen in real life. He makes them universal…so you have a better shot at internalizing it,” says eldest sister Jeanne. Here, he makes announcements at the end of Ash Wednesday Mass at Goodson Chapel at Duke Divinity School.FOSTERING A FRANCISCAN SPIRIT
He initially struggled to adjust to the disciplined, “almost monastic” life of Franciscans-in-training. “There were no phone calls. We got to write one letter home a month. We didn’t go anywhere,” he laments.
“The thought behind it,” he understands now, “was that this is a very different way of life, and you can’t hang on to your old way of life. It was very difficult but I think situated me well for an understanding of what religious life is and what it’s not, and for all the steps thereafter.”
His world further expanded when the Franciscans sent him to their international seminary in Rome, the Pontifical Theological Faculty of St. Bonaventure – known as the Seraphicum – where he loved the multicultural flavor and diversity of experiences. While all Franciscans are friars or “brothers,” some are also priests.
Michael Martin was ordained a Franciscan priest in 1989.
Father Martin’s first assignment took him to St. Francis High School outside of Buffalo, New York, where he coached basketball and was director of admissions – and where Father Gregory Hartmayer served as principal.
“Father Martin is a faithful son of St. Francis,” Archbishop Hartmayer says. “We worked closely together for five years at that school, and we’ve come to know each other very well. We oftentimes vacation together, a group of us friars, for many years now.”
In 1994, the Franciscans called Father Martin back to work at his beloved Curley High.
“If you ever get the chance to go back and be principal of your old high school,” he likes to joke, “you should take it. It’s a great justice moment to sit down with teachers who taught you, to sign their contract, and say, ‘How do you like me now?’”
For 16 years, Father Martin served as a Curley teacher, coach, administrator, principal and president – making a big impact on multiple levels, especially by fostering the Franciscan spirit that had captured him.
“He was always great with young people,” his sister Jeanne Martin says. “You have to be real. You have to meet them at their level. He knows how to do that, how to be relevant.”
He was similarly blessed as director of the Duke (University) Catholic Center in Durham, he says, where he gathered a ministry team that set a standard in donor engagement and student outreach with novel approaches such as “Confession on the Quad” and, for 15 months during COVID, celebrating Mass in a parking garage.
“He was amazing at fundraising there, and at increasing the size of the facility where students could come and attend Bible study and liturgies and just be in the company of other Catholic students,” Archbishop Hartmayer says.
In 2022, the archbishop was thrilled to welcome Father Martin to his own Archdiocese of Atlanta, to serve as a first-time parish priest at St. Philip Benizi – the same church Father Hartmayer had served before becoming Bishop of Savannah, then Archbishop of Atlanta.
Young Michael Martin, a tenor, performs with his fellow friars at an event. “He has a really nice voice,” says little sister Ellie. DEFINING HIS MINISTRY
Looking ahead, the bishop-elect can’t predict the shape of his ministry but says it will certainly reflect the Gospel, Church teachings and Franciscan values.
He takes seriously the call St. Francis received while praying at the church of San Damiano to “Go, rebuild my church …”
You do that, he says, through words and through deeds.
“The Church has since its inception always been a Church in need of grace, in need of reform,” he says. “So the reform of the Church is to continuously re-form our way of seeing ourselves and our God. That’s the ‘rebuilding’ that has to constantly take place. It’s about never getting comfortable, about always diving more deeply into deeper water.”
His homilies connect with people, just as St. Francis’ sermons did. “He talks about things that happen in real life. He makes them universal. They’re not just theory. He gets his message out in ways it can be received, so you have a better shot at internalizing it,” his older sister Jeanne Martin says.
His younger sister, Ellie Proctor, puts it this way: “His homilies will blow you away.”
Emulating St. Francis, Bishop-elect Martin also “has a heart for the poor,” his fellow Franciscan Father Michael Heine says, a quality that surfaced on his first day in Charlotte when he made an unscheduled stop at the food bank and again recently when he hired a workforce-training program for event catering.
The bishop-elect has little patience for division, politically or philosophically in the Church, saying we are called by God to unite across differences: “We need to first begin with presence and listening, and then confirming where Christ is with us. What do we share? Where are we united?”
He eschews labels used in the U.S. Church that reflect societal divisions – conservative, liberal, orthodox.
“I don’t believe that needs to be the lens through which I see our diocese or any individual member in it. I just don’t think that is the optic Jesus gives us. Every encounter Jesus has in the Gospel with others, He always meets them where they are. So I’m not here to proclaim a side and then drag everyone who’s not there to it. And I do believe the more we continue to describe ourselves in these terms, the more we live into those paradigms.”
Rather, he says, he will build community with his brother priests and with the people of the diocese. He will focus on Jesus and the good news of salvation, as St. Francis did: “One of the greatest aha! moments in St. Francis’ life revolves around Christmas. He couldn’t get over the fact that God would want to be one of us. For Francis, it is the Incarnation that is the foundation of everything he did. Today, people put him in a bird bath because he loved nature. Why did he love nature? He saw the unity, the goodness and the dignity of the created world because God became part of that created world in the person of Jesus. Jesus being one of us lifts all of us to such an incredible height, to God the Father.”
You can also count on the bishop-elect, he says, to call on people to do better – living the faith, reaching out in charity, and focusing on salvation.
“There will always be a bit of a disparity between what the Church is saying is important and what everyone else says. It’s the responsibility, it’s the mission of the Church to pick our heads up and look to a greater vision. The Scriptures so constantly over thousands of years continue to challenge us to look beyond our own particular circumstances. That’s what the Church is here to do – to constantly call us to accountability…to call us beyond ourselves.”
If that feels uncomfortable, he says, it should. Yet as the diocese moves forward with its new bishop, he likes to remind people that he’s feeling “jittery,” too – but that we really need not be concerned because, nodding to the Gospel of Matthew, “Jesus is always with us in the boat.”
— Liz Chandler. Spencer K.M. Brown contributed.
Father Michael Martin celebrating mother Bev Martin’s birthday with sisters from left Judy, Ellie and Jeanne. “My family is just very important to me,” he says.
Key dates in Bishop-elect Martin’s biography
Dec. 2, 1961 – Born in Baltimore to Bev and Don Martin. Three sisters: Jeanne, Judy and later Ellie
Spring 1979 – Graduated from Archbishop Curley High School in Baltimore
August 1979 – Entered the Conventual Franciscan Friars Novitiate in Ellicott City, Maryland
May 1984 – Graduated with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from St. Hyacinth College-Seminary in Massachusetts
1984-1985 – Served as a religious studies teacher and coach at St. Francis High School in Athol Springs, New York
1985-1988 – Attended and earned a Bachelor of Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Theological Faculty of St. Bonaventure – the Seraphicum – in Rome
1988-1989 – Served as transitional deacon at St. Adalbert Parish in Elmhurst, New York
June 10, 1989 – Ordained to the priesthood by Auxiliary Bishop John Ricard of the Archdiocese of Baltimore
1989-1994 — Returned to St. Francis High School to serve as admissions director, teacher and coach
1993 – Earned a master’s degree in education from Boston College
1994-2010 – Returned to alma mater Archbishop Curley High School to serve as teacher, coach, admissions director, principal and president
2007 – Received the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice award for service to the Church
2010-2022 – Served as director of Duke Catholic Center, the official Catholic community at Duke University in Durham
August 2022 – Appointed pastor of St. Philip Benizi Parish in Jonesboro, Georgia
April 9, 2024 – Vatican announced his appointment by Pope Francis to serve as Bishop of Charlotte
May 29, 2024 – Scheduled ordination as a bishop at St. Mark Church, Huntersville
May 30, 2024 – Installation as Diocese of Charlotte’s bishop
Bishop-elect Martin has also held a number of leadership positions in the Church, particularly in Catholic education, and he has served on multiple Catholic school boards and worked with Partners in Mission, a Boston-based consulting firm for Catholic education.
Meet the bishop, then join in the ordination online or on EWTN
Bishop-elect Michael Martin, OFM Conv., will be ordained at St. Mark Church on Wednesday, May 29, and installed as the fifth Bishop of Charlotte the next day at St. Patrick Cathedral. Due to the churches’ limited size, attendance at these liturgies is by ticket only.
Both Masses will be livestreamed on the Diocese of Charlotte’s YouTube channel, plus available “on demand” afterward.
EWTN will also air the ordination Mass at 3 p.m. Wednesday, May 29.
Come meet Bishop-elect Martin on Tuesday, May 28, during a special “Holy Hour with Benediction: An Evening of Praise and Prayer” at 7 p.m. at St. Mark Church (14740 Stumptown Road, Huntersville). Free, no ticket required.
Explore the special section
The Martin family opens up about life with a future bishop
Bishop Martin’s coat of arms harkens to his background
Key moments of the episcopal ordination
Long-time friend designs, creates Bishop Martin’s ring