When Society of Jesus officials first transferred the Rev. William Joseph “Bill” Watters to a floundering church in Baltimore in 1991, their directive to the soft-spoken cleric was clear: Confirm our impression that the situation there is hopeless, and we’ll shut it down for good.
Lucky for St. Ignatius Church — and for Baltimore, in general — the Jesuit priest had other ideas.
Over the next 33 years, Watters turned a congregation with paltry support into one of the best-attended, most culturally engaged in the city and spearheaded a renovation of its historic Italianate building. Then he used those feats as a springboard to create a network of schools that has educated thousands of under-resourced city children.
“At the end of the day, he will have founded, in Baltimore, an educational ecosystem for 2-year-olds through 18-year-olds,” said Madeline Lacovara, a parishioner at St. Ignatius who has known and volunteered with Watters since 2012. “Just think about that. The public schools haven’t been able to do that, and they’ve been in business a long time.
“He reinforces what I believe, which is that God has a lot of dreams and then asks people to make them happen,” she adds. “Bill is one of God’s dreamers.”
Born in Montclair, New Jersey, in 1934, Watters, the son of Irish American dairy farmers, attended St. Peter’s Preparatory, a Jesuit high school in Jersey City, where he absorbed some of the Catholic religious order’s key values, including its emphasis on helping the marginalized, putting the Gospel to practical use and fostering growth through education. He joined the order after graduation.
He flashed his talent for influencing others early on as a teacher and counselor at Loyola Blakefield, a Jesuit high school for boys in Baltimore. Dennis O’Shea was one of his students in the 1970s.
“He’s the kind of guy who helps you think differently about things without imposing his views on you,” said O’Shea, a retired communications professional who has remained close to the priest. “He helped get all of us to learn to think critically, to analyze, to make our own decisions.”
Watters deployed similar gifts as a priest. He helped revitalize a dwindling congregation at Old St. Joseph’s, a historic Jesuit church in Philadelphia, in the 1980s, and answered his order’s call to evangelize in Africa by becoming pastor of a church in Nigeria that boasted a devoted membership of 15,000 people. It was only due to a heart condition that church leaders returned him to the United States and St. Ignatius.
His first weekend here supported the perception that the church was dying: Just 167 people attended his first two Masses. “I said to myself, what am I doing here? This doesn’t make sense,’” Watters recalls with a bit of a laugh. Then he put his Jesuit values into effect.
Watters knew the church site on North Calvert Street had once been home to Loyola College (now Loyola University Maryland). He knew that under-resourced city schools were leaving their overwhelmingly Black population behind. And he believed the Jesuits’ history of slave ownership left them with an extra obligation to help. To his surprise, when he proposed starting a school, Maryland’s Jesuits offered $150,000 in seed money, the Abell Foundation pitched in the same, and the St. Ignatius Loyola Academy for middle school boys was born, complete with funding for its first coterie of students in 1993.
Watters’ talent for imagining new projects was matched only by his gift for fundraising. Those who know him say his manner is so prepossessing, his vision for the future so clear, that donors find it hard to resist contributing. The millions he has raised improved the academy, created and funded Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Upper Fells Point in 2007, and established the Loyola Early Learning Center for prekindergarten and elementary students in 2017.
Nearly all academy students enroll in high school, virtually all Cristo Rey graduates have enrolled in college, and more than 90% of learning center students read at or above grade level. By the time a $10 million expansion project is completed late this summer, the learning center — now known as The Loyola School — will extend to the fourth grade, and the “ecosystem” Watters has built will enroll close to 700 city students, most of them tuition-free.
“I think you’re going to see a better Baltimore because of what he has done,” said O’Shea, who adds that Watters is “closer to a walking saint than anyone I’ve ever met.”
Watters, who turned 90 in March, has no time for such talk. He’s too busy keeping a full-time schedule that includes working with faculty, counseling clergy and parishioners, advising students and families, helping to oversee the construction project, and regularly celebrating Mass at St. Ignatius, which is now the parish home for more than 800 families.
“If God gives me the energy and the aspiration and the desire, why would I want to retire?” he said with a smile. “I love what I’m doing. I love the parish, I love the schools, I love the kids and their families. And there’s work to be done.”
The Rev. William Joseph “Bill” Watters
Age: 90
Hometown: Montclair, New Jersey
Current residence: Baltimore
Education: St. Peter’s Preparatory School in Jersey City, New Jersey; Fordham University, A.B. and M.S; Loyola University Chicago, M.A.; Regis College at the University of Toronto, M. Ed.
Career highlights: Teacher/counselor, Loyola Blakefield school; pastor, Old St. Joseph’s Church, Philadelphia; pastor, St. Joseph Catholic Church, Benin City, Nigeria; founding president, St. Ignatius Loyola Academy; executive assistant to the Maryland Jesuit Provincial; pastor and assistant priest, St. Ignatius Church; co-founder, Loyola Jesuit College, Abuja, Nigeria; founder and president, Cristo Rey Jesuit High School; founder and president, Loyola Early Education Center (now The Loyola School)
Family: Five nephews and three nieces
