Father J. Michael Lawlor's active priestly ministry ended where it started: in Hamilton.

Before that, how he got to Hamilton.

He was born in Lawrence on Jan. 31, 1948. One of the three sons and an only daughter of the late Edward and Helen (Moynihan) Lawlor. His siblings are Edward, James, and Pamela.

He attended the parish school, St. Patrick, and then Central Catholic High School, also in Lawrence, prior to entering the archdiocesan seminaries. He told the Pilot at the time of his first appointment as pastor that there was a literal litany of excellent priests at his home parish, citing as particular influences Bishop Francis Irwin and Msgr. Eugene McNamara, both now deceased.

Following seminary formation, he was ordained at Holy Cross Cathedral by Humberto Cardinal Medeiros on May 19, 1973.

His first assignment was as an associate at St. Paul Parish, Hamilton (1973-1978); he was subsequently associate at the bordering parish, St. Mary of the Annunciation, Danvers (1978-1988). Bernard Cardinal Law named him parochial vicar at St. Theresa of Avila, West Roxbury (1988-1995); and then to the same position back in familiar territory at St. Ann, Peabody.

Cardinal Law also named him to his first appointment as a pastor when, in August 1996, he named him pastor of St. Maria Goretti Parish in Lynnfield, a town bordering on Peabody.

In February 2003, his classmate, Bishop Richard G. Lennon, then the apostolic administrator of the archdiocese, named him pastor of St. Joseph Parish, Needham, where he served until 2010 when Cardinal O'Malley named him pastor at St. Paul Parish, Hamilton, where it had all begun in his priestly life some 37 years prior.

Father Lawlor served at Hamilton until his retirement on June 1, 2023. His 50 years of active priestly ministry have been exclusively in parishes and almost evenly divided between appointments as an associate or parochial vicar (23 years) and as a pastor (27 years).

Father Lawlor will live at Regina Cleri in Boston's West End in retirement.