One of the most moving moments at the closing Mass of the National Black Catholic Congress gathering in 2023 in the Washington area came when Bishop Roy E. Campbell Jr. the president of the congress, invited young people considering vocations to the priesthood or religious life to come forward, and several did, including young adults, teens and children.
“Can you imagine the courage it took as a young person to get up and walk in front of a few thousand people and let them know, ‘I’m thinking about that’…? That is their faith in action,” Bishop Campbell said in a recent interview with the Catholic Standard and Spanish-language El Pregonero newspapers of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.
Asked about his advice to anyone considering a religious vocation, he said, “If you feel God is calling you, act on it. That is what I did.”
In the interview as he is entering a new phase of his ministry, Bishop Campbell reflected on his own journey to becoming a priest and bishop.
On May 1, Pope Leo XIV accepted the resignation of Bishop Campbell from the office of auxiliary bishop of Washington. Bishop Campbell, who is now 78, had submitted his resignation to the pope in 2022 when he turned 75 as required by Church law. While retiring from his role as an auxiliary bishop, he may continue assisting with Confirmations and other pastoral matters, and he is continuing to serve as the pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Largo, Maryland, which he has led since 2010.
Asked about how his life has changed since the pope accepted his resignation as an auxiliary bishop, Bishop Campbell said, “It’s been busier than it was before… I told the cardinal if he wanted me to stay on as pastor, I’d be happy to do that.”
It’s a matter, he said, of figuring out what he can do to help in his service to the Archdiocese of Washington, where he has lived his whole life. “I never get tired of Confirmations,” he said, adding, “I get tired traveling to get there and getting back.”
When he became an auxiliary bishop of Washington in 2017, he chose the episcopal motto, “Do whatever he tells you,” the Blessed Virgin Mary’s words to the people helping at the wedding feast at Cana, asking them to do what Jesus told them to do, and Jesus turned water into wine in His first miracle.
“Mary is telling us, telling me, do whatever He tells you, and this is what I try to live by… (to) do whatever the Lord is calling me to do,” Bishop Campbell said.
His own journey of faith has wound through the Archdiocese of Washington since his birth. He was baptized at St. Mary Star of the Sea Church in Indian Head, Maryland, received his First Holy Communion at St. Cyprian Church and the sacrament of Confirmation at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart Church in Washington. Roy Campbell Jr. graduated from Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington in 1965 after earlier graduating from Sacred Heart School.
“Before I understood what religion was about, I understood how important it was,” he said, describing how his mother Julia Campbell, a devout Catholic, took him and his two brothers to Mass faithfully every Sunday. He later learned why they took a streetcar to their grandmother’s church, St. Cyprian’s, when they lived near the Shrine of the Sacred Heart.
Once when his mother went to Sacred Heart, “she was told she would have to sit in the back of the church, and she wasn’t going to do that,” Bishop Campbell said, describing the discrimination that African Americans faced in those times in the nation’s capital, even in Catholic churches.
After attending Howard University, the future bishop worked in the retail banking industry in the Washington and Baltimore area and earned a graduate degree from the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce. A pivotal moment for him came after work one evening in Baltimore when he helped a man seeking food. The man said, “You’re a Christian, aren’t you?”
“When I looked in his eyes, I saw the eyes of Christ looking back at me,” Bishop Campbell remembered.
After taking early retirement in 2002, he began studying to become a permanent deacon, but felt called to be a priest, and he was ordained to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Washington in 2007 at the age of 59. That year as his father, Roy Campbell Sr. – a longtime employee of the Bureau of Engraving – was dying, the new priest anointed him, and on his deathbed, he became Catholic.
After serving as a parochial vicar at St. Augustine Parish and assisting at Immaculate Conception Parish, he was appointed as the pastor of another Washington parish, Assumption, in 2008, and two years later he became the pastor at St. Joseph in Largo, where he continues to serve.
His approach as a pastor, he said, has been to treat his parishioners with respect and love, and work with them as they are trying to achieve spiritual growth and ultimately salvation in heaven.
“People can quickly tell if you love them or not, and they respond accordingly,” Bishop Campbell said, adding, “That makes all the difference in the world, that you’re willing to give yourself completely to the people that the Lord has entrusted to you.”
Bishop Campbell said the Gospel message is as pertinent today as when those words were written, and he often uses real-life examples from his family to bring that message home to his parishioners. He tells them it’s important to believe and live their faith, “not just when you’re in church, but every moment of your life.”
Asked about his advice for Washington’s two new auxiliary bishops – Bishop-elect Gary Studniewski and Bishop-elect Robert Boxie III – Bishop Campbell said, “Listen to your heart… Look at your ministry and look at your life and take care of yourself.” He said priests and bishops don’t like to say “no” to requests, but it’s important to rely on the gifts and talents of others to assist in those endeavors. “You don’t have to do it all yourself,” he said.
Bishop Campbell is continuing to serve as the president of the National Black Catholic Congress. “To be Black and Catholic, this is who I am,” he said. The bishop hopes he can help Black Catholics “realize you’re not second-class Catholics, you’re not on the sidelines… that you have talents and gifts to use.”
Listening sessions are now being held at parishes to develop a Black Ministry Plan for the Archdiocese of Washington that will be in conjunction with the archdiocese’s six goals for pastoral action that flowed from Cardinal McElroy’s consultations with lay leaders and priests.
Bishop Campbell has helped lead the archdiocese’s new initiative, “Honoring Those Who Were Enslaved: Do Justice, Love Goodness and Walk Humbly,” with an action plan that includes providing access to sacramental and other records to assist descendants of the enslaved in discovering their family history, and funding a public monument to commemorate contributions of enslaved peoples to the Catholic Church in Maryland. The initiative followed archaeological surveys on a hillside at Sacred Heart Cemetery in Bowie, Maryland that uncovered what are believed to be the unmarked graves of hundreds of people who had been enslaved at the White Marsh plantation operated by the Jesuits’ religious order in that area before emancipation.
As the interview concluded, Bishop Campbell said, “I do what I do, because this is what I believe from my heart. If your heart is open, you can hear the Holy Spirit… We don’t always know where it will lead us. What we have to have faith in and hope in and believe in, is that God is always with us.”
And on a lighter note, he said that now that he is retired as an auxiliary bishop, “Maybe I’ll even get a dog. I haven’t had a dog in a long time!”
