Serving at a parish in a dangerous part of Miami that included being held up at gunpoint is among the memorable moments of Father Richard Sudlik’s 50 years of priesthood in the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

Father Sudlik, 77, now serving as director of Christ the King Retreat Center in Buffalo, was taught by Oblates while at Bishop Fallon High School in Buffalo, New York. Those years helped draw him to the order, which he joined in 1963. He made final vows in 1969 and was ordained a priest in 1972.

After 21 years of ministry that included three parishes, he arrived at Holy Redeemer in Miami in 1993. It didn’t take long to realize this assignment would be vastly different from anything else on his resumé.

“It was in a section of the city called Liberty City, which started out as a segregated part of Miami,” he said. “I was the only white face in the church. To walk into a gathering and be the only white person is an interesting experience.”

“I really got to love the community,” he added. “I often tell people that everybody should be a minority once in their life.”

Among his vivid memories of Liberty City is the night he was robbed.

“I came home one night and it was dark,” he said. “We had bars on the doors (for extra security), that type of thing. And, I was fumbling with my keys. I heard a noise and I turned around and there’s this gun pointing at my nose. And, it was these two young kids, and I just kept saying, ‘Just calm down, for God’s sake’ because they were really nervous.”

They took his wallet and his car, which was recovered.

“It was right around the corner,” he said. “They (also) stole my golf clubs. Funny thing was, when the police came, I told them that they stole my golf clubs. And, they said, ‘They’ll show up in a pawn shop.’ And, sure enough, a day later they found them.”

The ordeal left his parishioners embarrassed that someone in their own neighborhood would rob him. But rather than making him angry or fearful, it created a bond that exists to this day. Since leaving the parish in 2001, he has continued making regular visits to Sacred Heart. The relationships are deep, and the life lessons powerful.

There was a unique type of intimacy he felt serving this parish of 200 families. He felt it in the way they introduced him to others.

“It wouldn’t be like, ‘This is Father Sudlik.’ It would be ‘This is my priest, Father Sudlik,’” he said. “And, that phrase, ‘my priest,’ I always thought was rather endearing.”

After a variety of administrative and parish assignments after Sacred Heart, he came to Minnesota in 2018 when he was appointed to serve on the preaching team of Christ the King Retreat Center in Buffalo. Because of his childhood in Buffalo, New York, he jokes that he has “come back” to Buffalo. While serving at a parish in New Orleans, he mentioned an interest in being assigned to a retreat center. After the death of Father Anthony Dummer, an Oblate who previously had served on the preaching team at Christ the King, Father Sudlik got the invitation to come to Minnesota and join the preaching team. In 2020, Father Sudlik became the director of Christ the King, replacing Father James Deegan, who stepped down from the role due to declining health but stayed on staff with the preaching team until his death Sept. 20, 2021.

“I’ve done a lot of preaching, and did a lot of preaching at retreat houses and all, but I’ve never been stationed at one” prior to Christ the King, Father Sudlik said. He had to wait a few months so that a replacement could be found for his parish in New Orleans. Upon his arrival in Minnesota, he became head of the center’s preaching team, which provides silent retreats for laypeople and clergy, with most of them three-day group events for 20 to 30 people.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of Christ the King Retreat Center, also known as King’s House, with a celebration planned 2 p.m. Aug. 21. The center hosts about 45 retreats a year, and had 2,638 guests in 2021.

“One of the consistent things about being a priest is you find yourself in preaching situations,” Father Sudlik said. “For 12 years, I was part of our provincial administration and, because of that, I had a lot of invitations to preach at different functions. Doing retreats is part of my life, it’s what I enjoy doing more than about anything in terms of ministry. I like to preach the Word.”

As he looks at the retreat landscape locally, he has noticed at least one interesting trend.

“One of the things that has struck me is that, especially as we’ve come out of the pandemic, we’re having a lot of new people who’ve never been to a retreat before” coming to Christ the King, he said. “That has been really wonderful for me. We love to grow our base. I think a lot of it (attraction to going on retreat) is it’s a very unsettled time. You hear a lot of noise in the world and a lot of competing voices. To be able to go to a place where things are quiet and still, and that you get hopefully fed spiritually by the preaching that we offer, I think, is what people are looking for in a time of chaos.”