Josef Otmar’s Work at Roger Bacon Chapel by Kary Ellen Berger When master carpenter Josef Otmar steps into his workshop, he does so with an unusual posture for a craftsman, one of listening. Silence, he says, is not empty. It is where God speaks and the work of Otmar’s hands …

Woodworking has run through the Otmar family line for more than five generations. For Josef Otmar V, however, the craft became more than a trade—it is a vocation, one that serves the Church by creating sacred spaces for Eucharistic worship. Otmar’s journey into woodworking began early, when he entered an …