Maryland Priest Boots Funeral, Mourners, Casket From Church

CHARLOTTE HALL, MD — A Maryland priest threw a temper tantrum at a funeral last week, telling the bereaved family of Agnes Theresa Hicks to “get the hell out” of his church and take “this thing” — meaning Ms. Hicks’ casket — with them. The Rev. Michael Briese lost his cool when a mourner knocked over a chalice and damaged it while offering a hug to one of the deceased woman's daughters.

The priest’s rant, which brought to bear the full pressure of the Archdiocese of Washington, was captured on cellphone video and widely shared on social media. Briese ordered hundreds of mourners out of Saint Mary’s Catholic Church, and even called Charlotte Hall police, Ms. Hicks’ daughter, Shanice Chisley, said.

The 54-year-old Ms. Hicks did get a funeral Mass after stunned family members picked up her casket and carried it to the waiting hearse, but not at the church where she had been baptized. Police who responded to the priest’s call for help in ejecting the family determined they had done nothing wrong and provided an escort to Briscoe-Tonic Funeral Home in another county. There, the Rev. Scott Woods, a priest from another parish, performed the service.

When the church’s golden cup was damaged, “all hell broke loose,” Chisley told television station WTTG.

“He literally got on the mic and said, ‘there will be no funeral, there will be no Mass, no repass, everyone get the hell out of my church,’ ” Chisley said. “He disrespected our family, he disrespected my mother. He called my mother 'a thing.' He said, 'get this thing out of my church! Everyone get the hell out of my church!’ It was very sad. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

Another daughter, Renetta Baker, had a message for Briese: “You're not a preacher. You’re not a pastor. You’re not a father of the Lord. You’re not any of that. You’re the devil,” Baker said in the TV interview.

Baker was on the receiving end of a hug when the chalice was knocked over. No one noticed it at the time, but “one of the ladies [at the church] came out and saw it, and she went back and told him, told Father Michael,” Baker told The Enterprise, a twice-weekly newspaper in California, Maryland.

“He came out yelling at me,” she said. “So I stood up and said we’re going to take care of it after the funeral. Then he went back, then he came to the mic and said ‘There will be no funeral today.’ ”

Larry Hicks, Ms. Hicks’ brother, said the priest’s response was “uncalled for and it really hurt me.”

“It really did,” he told WTTG. “To see your loved one come there to rest and to be shut down like that.”

Ed Hill, an attendant for the Briscoe-Tonic Funeral Home who was helping with the service, told The Enterprise he tried to diffuse the situation.

“I tried to calm him down, asked if I could pray with him, and he told me I need to get out of here, too. He told me ‘You need to get those people out of here, I want all their asses out of here right now,” Hill told the newspaper. “He was cursing, he didn’t want prayer, he didn’t want anything.”

Funeral home owner Tony Tonic told The Enterprise he was disturbed by the priest’s language and what had happened.

“I’m just appalled by what I heard happen and the language he was using when he addressed me, as the owner of the funeral home,” he said. “It was just … it made me very angry, and it needs to be addressed.”

The Archdiocese of Washington apologized to the family, saying in a letter that what occurred at Ms. Hicks’ June 26 funeral “does not reflect the Catholic Church’s fundamental calling to respect and uplift the God-given dignity of every person nor does that incident represent the pastoral approach the priests of the Archdiocese of Washington commit to undertake every day in their ministry.”

“On days such as today, our response should always be one of compassion and sympathy for the bereaved as well as prayers for the deceased,” the Rev. Michael Fisher, secretary for ministerial leadership for the Archdiocese, wrote in a letter shared with the Maryland Independent. “I reiterate and reinforce the sincere apology you and your family received from Father Woods earlier today.”

The incident remains under review, the Archdiocese said.

Briese apologized in a letter to the editor in The Enterprise, a twice-weekly newspaper in California, Maryland, writing: "I lost my temper at a moment when anger was the most inappropriate response to those people entrusted to my care at that moment of ministry.”

Ms. Hicks’ son, Davon Chisley, told WTTG the incident left a lasting impression.

“My mom was supposed to have a great funeral and all this came up and I’m so traumatized by it,” he said. “I'm going to be thinking about this every day. I’ll never forget this day.”

Photo by Rob Byron / Shutterstock