The Rev. David Smith arrived at St. Thomas more than 50 years ago, but his eyes still brighten when speaking of his true passion – advocating for justice and peace, both at home and abroad.

Smith, a 78-year-old priest, has been involved with the university since 1955 and now celebrates Mass every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, as well as the occasional Sunday, as one of the university’s priests.

As Smith sits in a lounge in the faculty residence hall, a fan humming in the corner, he joked that, if it weren’t for his allergy to burning candles, he might be asked to hold Mass on Sundays more often.

Smith hadn’t planned on coming to St. Thomas and becoming a priest. At one time, he was on track to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s engineering program.

“I came wanting to strengthen my knowledge of my Catholic faith,” Smith said. “I had never attended a Catholic school.”

In 1970, Smith became a professor of theology at St. Thomas and was quickly appointed to the justice and peace studies board, where he helped to petition for the addition of a minor in justice and peace studies to the St. Thomas curriculum.

“We got it approved, and that was the beginning,” Smith said.

Smith’s involvement in world studies and activism grew from there. Today, he is involved in multiple organizations that help to further peace between people the world over. Minnesota Break the Bonds is one such group, established to “encourage the state of Minnesota not to buy Israel bonds because the money from them is used, in part, for the occupation of the West Bank,” Smith explained.

Smith said one time, during a monthlong stay in Gaza with a group of priests and nuns, a few of them went to the border that divides Gaza in half to see what it was like.

“There was a couple trying to get to Gaza City in order to register their child for citizenship,” Smith said. “They had come from Saudi Arabia, had come through Egypt and gotten this far to find that the checkpoint was closed.”

The border closed with a line of people waiting, so the group of priests and nuns talked with an armed checkpoint sentry for half an hour trying to convince him to open the border.

“We were talking with him, ‘There are people here that need to get through. There’s some people that need to get to the hospital. Why don’t you open the checkpoint?’” but Smith said the guard wouldn’t budge.

In the West Bank, his group participated in multiple demonstrations at Bil’in.

“We would march to the wall built by Israel which had captured much of the farmland and put it over to the settlement,” Smith recalls.

He said they rarely reached the wall without being stopped by police. Sometimes they would even pull protesters away in hopes that the demonstration would dwindle.

Smith is also a member of the Iraqi American Reconciliation Project, “a group that was started to help support a Minneapolis Iraqi immigrant who founded Sinbad restaurant.”

Smith said when the man returned home, he was astonished at how bad the water situation was.

“Children were drinking polluted water from the Euphrates river,” Smith said.

To combat this problem, the organization was able to supply water filters with money raised from donations.

To repay the favor, Smith and others from the board of directors visited Iraq.

“I had been to Iraq twice before,” Smith said. “Once with the justice and peace department to teach a class and again about five months after that.”

Of all the things that Smith has done, working with the justice and peace studies department at St. Thomas has been one of his favorites. Even after retiring, he wanted to be involved, traveling to Palestine and Iraq with non-violent groups.

“Now I like to say that I’ve done studies and research in about 45 countries,” Smith said with a smile.

Meghan Meints can be reached at mein9517@stthomas.edu.