Known to all as Marty, Fr. Martin Kirk, CMF was born in Chicago in 1938. When a Claretian vocation director visited his home in the early 1950s to talk to his brother, it was instead Marty who enrolled at Saint Jude Seminary in Momence, IL.
After his ordination in 1965, he began his first assignment that would start him on his path of leadership: Formation Director at the freshly established Claretian college program at Saint Louis University. Although he had originally wanted to serve as a missionary in Latin America, Fr. Marty had been selected for this role by the Provincial Superior of the Eastern Province. He had a reputation as a talented mediator and the Provincial believed that he could bridge the generational gap between the young students and established members of the Province. However, Fr. Marty found leadership challenging. Listen below to hear him explain in his own words.
Despite this, Fr. Marty was, by many accounts, beloved by the students for his willingness to listen and help them. During his time at Saint Louis University, he established a program to send Claretian seminarians to the newly formed Claretian Guatemalan mission for a summer of learning and assisting with projects. His success led to further assignments in leadership, culminating with his election to Provincial Superior of the Eastern Province in 1980.
Fr. Marty’s leadership style was characterized by Fr. Ted Cirone CMF in Shared Mission: Marty Kirk, CMF as “not to insist on his authority but to guide by leadership, dialogue, persuasion, encouragement, consensus, and service.” During his time as Provincial, he worked to shape a more harmonious Eastern Province. He sent a group of Claretians to learn the “Corporate Reflection Process,” an organizational method that promotes open dialogue to reach a more mutual consensus regarding decisions from the community level to the Province level.
After completing his time as Provincial, he continued to serve in leadership. He was immediately elected to serve as Provincial Treasurer, a role he served in until his untimely death in 1996 at the age of 57 due to health problems stemming from a bout of rhematic fever in childhood.
While it would not be possible to encapsulate the entirety of Fr. Marty’s impact in one blog post, I can provide a few examples of how his legacy has endured in Claretian ministries alone. He co-founded Claret Center with Sister Mary Ellen Moore SH in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, which continues to offer spiritual direction services to this day. He was also a proponent of Claretian Publications in the Philippines, which still serves as the main printing house for Claretians internationally. Additionally, he is credited as bringing the Claretians to the World Wide Web. He facilitated the creation of email addresses for ministries and the registration of a website domain for the Province, making the Claretians one of the first congregations to have a web presence in the new age of the internet. And although he never became the international missionary he dreamed of in his youth, his ideas and leadership philosophy have had a lasting effect on the Claretian congregation.
