WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Redemptorists of the Baltimore Province elected a new leadership team to serve during the 2023-’26 term that includes Father John Olenick as provincial vicar. Father Olenick was born and raised in Winston-Salem and worked at the Winston-Salem Journal and then for R.J. Reynolds before entering the Redemptorist congregation in 1996. He was ordained a priest in 2003, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.
The new members of the Ordinary Provincial Council will guide the missionary activities of the Baltimore province. The elected leadership team assumes leadership under the Redemptorist theme “Missionaries of Hope in the Footsteps of the Redeemer.”
The Redemptorists are a religious congregation of priests and brothers founded in 1732 by St. Alphonsus Liguori in Naples, Italy. More than 4,000 Redemptorists are currently working with the poor and most abandoned in nearly every part of the world. More than 150 Redemptorist priests, brothers, and students represent the Baltimore province in the United States. Redemptorist priests staff two parishes in the Diocese of Charlotte: St. James Church in Concord and St. Joseph Church in Kannapolis.