HIGH POINT — As a young man, Father James Solari traversed Europe and the Holy Land studying the teachings of Jesus. Sixty-five years into his priesthood and thousands of miles from Bethlehem, he calls priestly ministry his most treasured privilege.
“Saying Mass is the most important thing,” says Father Solari, who at 90 joyfully serves as chaplain at Pennybyrn in High Point. “I’ve done that every day since June 28, 1955.”
Over the years Father Solari has been blessed with the opportunity to learn about the faith and offer Mass in many holy places, and he has used those experiences to teach others about Jesus.
It all started with his ordination that day in 1955. He and his confreres from the Benedictine-run Pontifical Athenaeum of Saint Anselm in Rome (also known as the Anselmianum or Sant’Anselmo) were ordained at a Benedictine abbey in Assisi.
“In 1955, eight of us who were students at the college in Rome were taken up to Assisi there to be ordained to the priesthood,” he recalls. “Each one of us had to go up to the bishop and respond exactly right. He then anointed us. I was thrilled to have my mother Frances and her aunt come over to Italy to be present for my ordination.”
The Benedictine abbey wasn’t far from the Franciscans’ Portiuncula Chapel, he recalls. “The Benedictines living there gave St. Francis the little chapel when he decided to become the leader of the wonderful people who became the Order of St. Francis of Assisi.” To this day, a beautiful friendship continues there between the two religious orders.
When the sun came up the next day in Rome, the newly ordained Father Solari had to prepare for yet another important celebration: his first Mass, which also happened to fall on the close of the academic year at Sant’Anselmo. All the faculty and students were present for the Solemn High Mass.
“I was a little scared because it was my very first Mass, but it went OK,” he remembers. “I was happy to have my mother there.”
Born on July 31, 1930, to James and Frances Solari in Richmond, Va., Father Solari is the eldest of six children. His parents were devout Catholics, and the Solari children were taught the faith from a young age. After James came Helen, Richard, Katherine and William. His youngest sibling, 22 years his junior, is Abbot Placid Solari of Belmont Abbey.
After attending Benedictine High School, a military school in Richmond founded by the Benedictine monks, the young James Solari entered college at Belmont Abbey.
It was there during his freshman year that he first felt called to the priesthood. In fact, it was the example of daily Mass with the Benedictine monks that attracted his attention.
“Before that, I was just like all the other kids in high school. If I hadn’t become a priest, I would have entered the Air Force because I really wanted to fly. I didn’t have glasses then,” he says with a smile.
But the calling to religious life had a stronger pull on his heart, he says.
He entered the Benedictine community as a novice, an intensive period of discernment to monastic life, and he made his first profession of vows in 1950.
Because Belmont Abbey was a junior college at the time, he transferred to St. Benedict’s College in Atchison, Kan., to complete his undergraduate degree in philosophy. He then returned to Belmont Abbey, professed his final vows as a Benedictine monk and studied in the seminary there for a year.
Then, Benedictine Abbot Vincent Taylor sent him to Rome to earn a licentiate in sacred theology.
In Rome, he studied with about 40 Benedictine monks, and during the summer he visited his confreres’ home monasteries throughout Europe, including Bavaria, Germany and Austria.
After ordination, he traveled to Paris, Lourdes and Switzerland with his mother. He also traveled to Spain and Portugal, including making a pilgrimage to the Marian shrine at Fatima, and he visited Ireland and England to help at abbeys there during the summer.
After graduating the young priest went to the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, run by the Jesuits, to learn about Sacred Scripture for a second licentiate, from 1957 to 1959.
“I was a student there but living at Sant’Anselmo,” he says. “After earning the licentiate, I joined 15 other graduates from the institute for a six-week period to visit the Middle East because we were students of Sacred Scripture, and that’s where scripture came from!”
The group studied the Old and New Testaments under the leadership of a Jesuit scholar on their comprehensive journey. First stop: Egypt and the pyramids. They couldn’t resist climbing one, he recalls. “You could see everything up there, but it was a big danger coming down, nothing to hold on to. If you lost your balance you wouldn’t make it … you can’t do that now. That was 1959.”
From there the group visited Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. “Of course, we couldn’t find him there, but we stayed at a monastery there overnight,” he says with a smile. “I climbed the mountain halfway up. I wanted to have that experience.”
They traveled to Damascus, Beirut, Israel, Jordan and Palestine, seeing firsthand the sacred places featured in the Bible and meeting scholars who were translating Biblical texts from the original ancient languages.
Not every experience on the trip was enjoyable: Once when the group visited the excavation site of a 2,000-year-old fountain, the ground began to collapse under their feet. Father Solari nearly fell to his death, along with a Jesuit priest in their group. Three or four people came to their rescue, joining hands to pull out the priests.
Father Solari relied on all of these experiences early in his ministry to speak about Jesus throughout the years with others, from his students at Belmont Abbey to the people who attended his Masses.
“The purpose of my studies was to help those who took my classes to have their interest in the teachings of Jesus Christ. Whether it was the Gospels or Epistles, I wanted them to know Jesus Christ,” he says.
In 1959 Father Solari returned to Belmont Abbey, where he became part of the theology faculty and later taught in the seminary that was once there. On weekends, he helped with celebrating Sunday Masses at various parishes in Charlotte and elsewhere, and he offered advice to students considering religious life.
“Consult Holy Scripture, the Gospels,” he advised young people then, and he continues to advise them now. “If you have a priest you’ve known, who you’ve gotten along with well, discuss it with him, whether he’s a religious or diocesan priest.”
In 1968, Father Solari went to The Catholic University of America to earn a doctorate. Two years later, he returned to Belmont Abbey College and served as its academic dean until 1978.
During that time, he gave in to the other, lesser tug on his heart, which had never gone away. He took lessons at the airport in Gastonia and earned his pilot’s license. He flew frequently over the next 10 years to various places. He even flew so he could offer Mass. North Myrtle Beach was one such destination – he would fly there on the weekends to offer Mass at the local parish before flying back to Gastonia.
In 1978, his ministry took a new turn and he became a parish priest, serving the new parish of Holy Family in Clemmons, followed by St. Michael Church and School in Gastonia. He saw firsthand the great need for priests in the growing Charlotte diocese, so in 1983 he petitioned Rome for a dispensation from his monastic vows to serve as a diocesan priest.
Upon receiving the dispensation, he was assigned to St. Eugene Parish in Asheville, where he served for the next 10 years.
“I loved it,” he recalls.
Father Solari also served at St. Leo the Great Parish in Winston-Salem.
In 2000, at the age of 70, he retired but continued helping out at parishes when called upon – a ministry of service that he greatly enjoyed.
In 2008, Independent Living at Pennybyrn was completed, and Father Solari became one of its first residents.
Although he has been retired for two decades, Father Solari’s ministry continues. He serves as the chaplain at Pennybyrn, where he offers a public Mass five days a week (with modified procedures during the pandemic) and privately says Mass in his apartment the other two days. He also hears confessions and anoints the sick and dying.
He finds much fulfillment in this ministry at Pennybyrn, as well as in the time he spends with fellow priests also living there, including his longtime friend Monsignor Joseph Showfety, who is also celebrating his 65th jubilee this year.
When Father Solari returned to Belmont over the years, he would concelebrate Mass with his brother Abbot Placid and the other Benedictine monks. Though they aren’t able to visit one another as often as they would like, the Solari siblings stay in touch and soon they plan to celebrate Father Solari’s 90th birthday together.
The years have been kind to the eldest Solari son, and he remains deeply grateful to God for his priestly ministry.
“I was so fortunate to do these things, and I thank God for each day because I never thought I’d live this long,” he says. “Sometimes, when you get this age, you can’t give as much. I’m so happy to be here, and I thank the Good Lord He hasn’t called me yet, but whenever He calls, I’m ready to go. That’s how life has to be.”
— Annie Ferguson, Correspondent