University of Detroit Mercy School of Law will host its 103rd annual Red Mass on Tuesday, September 29, at noon at Saints Peter and Paul Jesuit Church located at 629 E. Jefferson Avenue in downtown Detroit. The church is immediately adjacent to the School of Law Campus.
UDM’s Red Mass is an occasion for judges, lawyers, officials, and students of all faiths to pray together for guidance at the beginning of the new judicial term and join in the Renewal of the Lawyer’s Oath of Commitment.
The Oath is recited by all new lawyers in the State of Michigan as a mandatory part of swearing-in ceremonies. Renewal of the Oath is a voluntary means of reaffirming the pledge made at the onset of a lawyer’s career. This year, it will be led by federal Judge Patrick J. Duggan.
Duggan has served on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan since January 1987 and is currently a senior judge. Appointed by President Ronald Reagan, Duggan previously served on the Wayne County Circuit Court from 1977 to 1987 and was a senior partner of a private law firm in Livonia. He completed his undergraduate degree at Xavier University in Cincinnati and earned his law degree from University of Detroit School of Law in 1958, where he has served as president of the American Inn of Court since 1999 and Master of the Bench since 1986.
Duggan will retire from the bench the following day on September 30 after 38 years of honorable judicial service to the people of the State of Michigan and the United States. His grandson, UDM Law alumnus Michael Edward Duggan Jr., will introduce him for the Oath.
The celebrant of the Mass will be the Most Reverend George V. Murry, S.J., Ph.D. Pope Benedict XVI appointed him bishop of the Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio, where he has served since March 2007. Prior to his appointment, he served as Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago and then Bishop of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands.
Bishop Murry attended St. Joseph’s College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, St. Thomas Seminary in Bloomfield, Connecticut, and St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, Maryland, where he received a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy in 1972. That same year he entered the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits). He was ordained for the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus on June 9, 1979. He earned a Masters of Divinity degree from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley in 1979 and a doctorate in American Cultural History from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., in 1994.
Bishop Murry has held many important positions in Catholic dioceses and academic institutions, most notably in Detroit as associate vice president for Academic Affairs at University of Detroit Mercy (1994-95) and as a past member of the Boards of UDM and Loyola Academy. Since 2002, he has also served on the Board of Catholic Relief Services, the overseas arm of the U.S. Bishops, which provides food, clothing, shelter, and medicine for those in need.
The custom of a special religious ceremony for all members of the bench and bar at the opening of each term of the court arose principally in England, France, and Italy in the early 13th century. A mass was celebrated in honor of the Holy Spirit, for which red vestments were worn. Hence, the celebration became known as the Red Mass.
University of Detroit Mercy’s annual Red Mass dates back to 1877, when Detroit College, as the University was then known, began its first year with a mass at Saints Peter and Paul Church to ask the blessings of the Holy Spirit on the coming year’s work. The School of Law continued the tradition when it opened in 1912, again hosting the Red Mass on behalf of the Archdiocese of Detroit at Saints Peter and Paul through the present.
Visit the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law website for more information, www.law.udmercy.edu.
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