Fr. Adrian Fischer, OFM, a Trenton native, recently returned home to celebrate his 50th jubilee (Submitted photo).

As a young man, Fr. Adrian Fischer, OFM, had no interest in becoming a priest.

But there he was on July 13, back at his home parish, St. Mary in Trenton, celebrating his 50th jubilee with friends, family and others.

It felt good, said the 1966 graduate of Mater Dei Catholic High School in Breese, to be back in Clinton County.

“I haven’t had Mass at St. Mary in a long time,” said Fr. Adrian, who turned 77 on July 24. “Sometimes, when I’m home on vacation, I go there, but I hadn’t celebrated a Mass there. It was great to be back where it all started.

“Having family and friends around was the biggest thing — and being at my home parish and knowing the parishioners there are continuing the tradition of St. Mary. It meant so much to me.”

With ease, Fr. Adrian rattled off the list of places his vocation has taken him during the last half-century.

•Corpus Christi Parish in Chicago.

•St. Vincent de Paul in Nashville, Tenn.

•St. Benedict the Black in Grambling, La.

•Our Lady of Pepetual Help in Farmerville, La.

•St. Anthony of Padua and St. Joseph, both in Quincy.

•And finally, Little Flower of Jesus in Monroe, La., where he has been pastor since 2003.

“God has been good,” Fr. Adrian said of his longevity.

It wasn’t intended to happen this way.

“When I was younger, I was not interested in (the priesthood) at all,” Fr. Adrian said. “My uncle (also Adrian Fischer) was a priest, and I had an aunt who was a nun and cousins who were nuns. My brother (Henry) was in the seminary, but I didn’t want anything to do with it. It wasn’t until I got to be a senior in high school that I started thinking about what I wanted to do. The priesthood became an option for me.”

What altered the course?

“I was planning on going to a banking school. I had that all set up,” Fr. Adrian said, reflecting upon the final weeks of his senior year at Mater Dei. “We had a vocation day where we had different vocations to look at. At Mater Dei, we all had to go to one religious one and that made me think about it again. It went from there.”

It actually began much earlier, back in grade school when Fr. Adrian was tasked with the assignment of writing a story about his patron saint.

It was a challenge.

“I could never find Saint Adrian anywhere,” he said. “My middle name was St. Francis of Assisi, so I started reading about him. That was one thing. Then also, my uncle was a Franciscan priest, so I knew what the Franciscan life was really like. Those things put together made me go to the Franciscan way of life.”

Fr. Adrian’s brother, Fr. Henry Fischer, also was a priest in Bartelso. He died in 2013. Fr. Adrian said his family was always dedicated to Catholiscim and helping in any way they could.

“We lived out in the country, so we had a lot of work on the farm. That was one thing. And going to St. Mary School was another. There were some positive things, (like) having the nuns teach us. Religion was part of our life there. Religion was strong in my dad and my mom also. So as we grew up, we had strong religious backgrounds.”

Fr. Adrian currently serves in Monroe, La., a town of 50,000. Including the metro area of West Monroe, Richwood and Sterlington, the population is 100,000

“They’re all around you, and you can’t tell the difference, one from the other,” Fr. Adrian said.

Forty-five of Fr. Adrian’s 50 years in his vocation has been spent working in African American communities, something he pointed out he never would have been able to experience had he remained, for example, in his home parish in Trenton.

It’s something he has enjoyed through the years.

“When I was in theology, some of my friends were in Chicago at the Catholic Theological Union where Pope Leo went,” Fr. Adrian said. “They worked in the African American community nearby, so I went over there with them every once in a while. I became very interested in it. It was very joyful. It was very demonstrative. It was very friendly and helpful. I got enamored with it. My first ministry was in the African American community there, and I just continued with it.

“We have different styles of worship. The main difference is the style of songs and music that we use. And there’s the friendliness of the people. You come into church, and everybody is saying hello to everybody. It’s not a quiet situation at all.”

Fr. Adrian is unique in that he is also a father of children. He became a foster parent soon after he was ordained into the priesthood, and in 1991 he adopted two boys, half-brothers Joshua and Jason. Joshua was 4 and Jason was 2 when they were in foster care with Fr. Adrian. They were with him for five years before Fr. Adrian adopted them.

Joshua now 45 and lives in Nashville, Tenn., where Fr. Adrian previously served; Jason died four years ago.

Adopting the boys “helped in a lot of ways,” Fr. Adrian said. “When people came to me with parental problems, they knew I understood what they were talking about. There were other priests that adopted children also. I’m more of a home body, so having children was not quite the extreme problem that it would be otherwise. I had several parishioners that were very helpful. If I got a call late to go to the hospital when they were younger, I called a certain lady and she would come over and stay with the kids while I went to the hospital. It was that kind of support that I needed.”

Fr. Adrian doesn’t pay close attention to what is happening in the Diocese of Belleville. He is aware that Bishop Michael McGovern became the new archbishop of the Archdiocese of Omaha, Neb., and that there’s an ongoing search for a new bishop in Belleville.

Fr. Adrian emphasized the need for more young men to enter the priesthood, which has been a hot topic for several years among Catholics.

“That’s something we are all concerned about,” Fr. Adrian said. “God has a plan. I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure I’ll leave it in his hands — whatever it is.”

The Franciscans’ numbers also have dropped.

“We used to have six provinces in the United States,” Fr. Adrian said. “I was in the middle one. Last year, all of them joined together. We had four (priests) ordained this year. When I joined the Franciscans in 1968, there were 32 in my class. This year, we had six provinces joined together and there were only four. The difference is unbelievable.

“We’re going to get there. We’re all Franciscans, so we’ll hang in there together, support each other and see if we can get a few more to join us. We’ll do what we can.”

Fr. Adrian will never forget the Catholic education at Mater Dei that led him to the priesthood. That vocation day was long ago, but its impact has been profound.

“It was a fun place to be,” he said of Mater Dei. “There were a lot of students that had the same interests I did. We had a lot of good times. Of course, in those days, the spring play for the seniors was a great event. All the senior events were fun.”