Francis P. Filice - Personal Life

Personal Life

In 1947, Filice married Barbara Ann Fate, the daughter of Michael and Blanche Fate. Michael Fate was half Italian and half Irish and Blanche Fate was half Irish and half Swedish. Ms. Fate had earned a baccalaureate degree at Lone Mountain College in San Francisco.

Dr. and Mrs. Filice had six children: Linda Barbara Filice Williams (1948), Carol Barbara Filice Brown (1949), Michael Francis Filice (1952), Gael Barbara Filice Ayala (1953), Joseph Francis Filice (1955), and Marian Barbara Filice Previtali (1957). The Filice Family would settle on 24th Avenue in San Francisco's Richmond District, attending St. Monica's parish and school. Filice's daughters attended Presentation High School, while his sons attended St. Ignatius, San Francisco's Jesuit high school.

In the early 1960s, Filice participated in one of the first cursillo retreats given in San Francisco, and he became a Third Order Carmelite. In 1964, he took his family on a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. From the early 1960s to the middle 1970s, Filice was involved with the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the pro-life movement.

Mrs. Filice died from complications related to kidney failure on February 11, 1976. Soon after, Dr. Filice retired from his professorship at the University of San Francisco and was accepted by Archbishop Joseph Thomas McGucken as a seminarian of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. From 1977 to 1979, he was engaged in formation for the priesthood at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, CA. He was ordained a priest of Jesus Christ in August 1979 at St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco. The ordaining prelate was Archbishop John R. Quinn of San Francisco.

Filice served as a parochial vicar in various parishes of the Archdiocese of San Francisco until the mid-1980s, when, with the permission of Archbishop Quinn, he established the Holy Family Oratory of St. Philip Neri in the Archdiocese of San Francisco. The impetus for the foundation of the Oratory was an awareness of the attacks on the family in the West, which had taken deep root in the culture. Fr. Filice sought to combat these evils by engaging in a sustained and organized apostolic service to the family in the context of the Oratorian life. In addition, he saw the common life of the Oratory as a healthy form of community life for secular priests engaged in pastoral ministry. The Oratory had pastoral care of the students of San Francisco State University until 1991, when it transferred its operations to the parish of San Jose de la Mesa in Tijuana, Mexico. Fr. Filice served there until 1996, when Archbishop William Levada called him home to the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Fr. Filice was assigned to be chaplain of the Veterans Administration Hospital in San Francisco. He served in that capacity until his retirement in the early 2000s.

Filice currently resides in San Francisco, where he is senior priest in residence at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in the outer Richmond District. He serves as full-time chaplain to the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at 771 Ashbury Street in San Francisco. He is also part-time chaplain at the San Francisco County Jail, the Richmond Jail, and the San Bruno Jail, and at the Novitiate of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta's Missionaries of Charity, at St. Paul's on Church Street in the Noe Valley neighborhood of the Mission District.