Jesuit Priest Taught Liturgy in D.C., Rome

Jerome M. Hall, 59, a Jesuit priest who taught Catholic liturgy in Washington theology schools and at the Vatican, died March 11 at Georgetown University Hospital of complications from a heart ailment and an ulcer. He lived in the Jesuit community at St. Aloysius Catholic Church in Washington.

Father Hall was ordained in 1977. Early in his career, he was an associate pastor in Baltimore and a chaplain at Baltimore's Peabody Conservatory of Music. He was a student chaplain at Georgetown from 1979 to 1989. From 1997 to 2002, he was a professor of liturgy and liturgical theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

Since 2002, he had been spiritual director and professor of theology at the Washington Theological Union, a Catholic graduate school of theology in the District. He was also a faculty member at Theological College, a seminary at Catholic University. He wrote and spoke widely on practices of the Catholic liturgy. Father Hall was also a weekend pastoral assistant at St. Andrew by the Bay Catholic Church in Arnold.

Jerome Michael Hall was born in Baltimore. He entered the Jesuits in 1966 and studied at Loyola Seminary in Shrub Oak, N.Y., before graduating from Fordham University in New York. He taught at Gonzaga College High School in Washington before continuing his studies.

He was a talented singer and guitarist and received a master's degree in music from Catholic University in 1974. Later, at Georgetown, he directed musicals and performed in operas. He received a doctorate in liturgical and sacramental theology from Catholic University in 1997. He was the author of a 2001 book, "We Have the Mind of Christ: The Holy Spirit and Liturgical Memory in the Thought of Edward J. Kilmartin."

Survivors include his parents, Dr. James A. Hall and Marie J. Wassel of Timonium, Md.; and two brothers, Rep. John Hall (D-N.Y.) of Dover Plains, N.Y., and James A. Hall Jr. of South Burlington, Vt.

-- Matt Schudel