Father Francis Schemel, Jesuit priest and teacher

The Rev. Francis Schemel, a Jesuit priest who taught high school at what is now Loyola Blakefield, died Aug. 4 at his order’s community house at Georgetown University in Washington. He was 93. No medical cause of death was available.

Born in Archbald, Pa., he attended the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Scranton as a pre-med student.

He entered the Society of Jesus at the Novitiate of St. Isaac Jogues in Wernersville, Pa., in 1946. He received a bachelor of arts from Woodstock College in Maryland, a master’s degree in humanities from Bellarmine College in Kentucky and a degree in sacred theology, also from Woodstock.

He was ordained a priest in 1958.

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He taught German at then-Loyola High School from 1960 to 1968. He was moderator of the school’s mothers’ club and also led student overseas tours.

He later was a minister at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. He also served as a minister and treasurer at New York’s Woodstock College.

In 1975 he was named minister of the Leonard Neale House in Washington, then also as minister and treasurer of the Carroll House. In 1984 he was named to an administrative post at Georgetown Preparatory School in Bethesda, then became Georgetown University’s campus minister. He remained at that job for 30 years.

“Everyone grows physically, and that's something we can't control,” he said when asked to state his life’s work, according to the Jesuits’ Maryland Province. “We grow intellectually through life experience and our jobs. I am here to help people grow spiritually.”

A funeral Mass was held Aug.9.

Father Schemel leaves no immediate survivors.

—Jacques Kelly