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Retired Bishop John M. Smith of Trenton, N.J., died Jan. 22 in Morris Hall Meadows, a long-term care facility in Lawrenceville, N.J., after a long illness. He was 83.
A Funeral Mass was celebrated Jan. 26 at St. Mary of the Assumption Cathedral in Trenton. Bishop Smith was entombed in the mausoleum of St. Mary Cemetery in Trenton.
A New Jersey native, he headed the Trenton Diocese from 1997 to 2010. Before that, he was coadjutor bishop from two years and then he succeeded his predecessor, Bishop John C. Reiss, when he retired.
Before returning to his home state as a bishop, Bishop Smith headed the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Fla., 1991-1995, and before that, he was an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Newark for three years. Newark was his home archdiocese; he was ordained a priest there in 1961.
Born in Orange, N.J., he was the oldest of three children. He attended St. Benedict’s Preparatory School in Newark and Jesuit-run John Carroll University in Cleveland. He entered Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University in South Orange.
After his ordination, then-Father Smith held several positions in the Archdiocese of Newark, among them assistant chancellor, tribunal official, parish priest, director of the Cursillo movement and dean of the archdiocese’s Bergen County deanery.
He was named a monsignor by St. Paul VI in 1971.
In 1982, he was appointed to the faculty of the Pontifical North American College in Rome where he served until his return to Newark in 1986. He was appointed pastor of St. Mary parish in Dumont, N.J. and was the archdiocese’s vicar general and moderator of the curia.
He earned a doctorate in canon law from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
He is survived by his two brothers, Benedictine Father Andrew Smith and Gregory Smith.—CNS
