Upon the end of his term in 1898, Richards engaged in pastoral work attached to Jesuit educational institutions throughout the northeastern United States.

As a result, he abandoned his ministry and moved to New York City to search for work in business, leaving his family in the care of his father in Granville, Ohio.

Richards remained at the college for three years, where he was active in school sports,[5] before entering the Society of Jesus and proceeding to the novitiate in Frederick, Maryland, on August 7, 1872.

[12] Immediately after the completion of his Jesuit formation, Richards was made the rector and president of Georgetown University, taking office on August 15, 1888,[14] and succeeding James A.

[15] He had a plan to transform Georgetown into a modern, comprehensive institution that would be the leading university of both the Catholic Church and the United States.

[17] Though Richards sought to dispel the perception that Jesuit schools were of inferior quality than their secular counterparts, he maintained that the curriculum of the Ratio Studiorum should be preserved.

[20] Richards sought to induce prominent scholars to join the faculty of Georgetown; he recruited the Austrian astronomer Johann Georg Hagen and several distinguished scientists from the Smithsonian Institution.

[19] Richards criticized the decision to relocate the theological training of Jesuits from Georgetown to the "semi-wilderness" of Woodstock, which was "remote from libraries, from contact with the learned world, and from all the stimulating influences which affect intellectual life".

[21] Richards expanded the School of Medicine by establishing a chair and laboratory of bacteriology; increasing the number of instructors in anatomy, physiology, and surgery; and improving the chemistry curriculum.

This proposal was approved by the Jesuit superior general, Luis Martín, who feared that the Vatican might suppress Georgetown altogether if it did not acquiesce.

The faculties of the law and medical schools publicly protested the proposal, and Catholic University dropped its plans.

[25] Eventually, an agreement was reached that Catholic University would focus exclusively on the graduate education of secular priests.

Richards was able to have the bulk of the work completed by February 20, 1889, the date on which the university began its three-day centenary celebration.

[27] In 1892 Richards received a donation from the socialite Elizabeth Wharton Drexel for the construction of Dahlgren Chapel of the Sacred Heart.

That year, he also procured the library of historian John Gilmary Shea, which extensively documented the history of the Catholic Church in the United States.

In 1893, James Jeffrey Roche, the editor of the Catholic Boston newspaper The Pilot, wrote to Charles William Eliot, the president of Harvard University, about the fact that no Catholic universities were included on the list of institutions whose graduates were automatically eligible for admission to Harvard Law School.

[31] Eliot's response, which was published in The Pilot, was that the quality of education at Catholic universities was inferior to that offered at their Protestant counterparts.

Upon the provincial superior's instruction, Richards then unsuccessfully lobbied to have all 24 Jesuit colleges in the United States added to the list.

[30] He remained interested in Georgetown's astronomical observatory, and he petitioned to have a station established in South Africa so that the entire sky could be studied.

Upon the recommendation that it would benefit his health, Richards moved to the novitiate in Los Gatos, California, in March 1900, but he was there only briefly before visiting his family in Boston after his mother's death.

[39] Being advanced in age, he retired from the position on March 25, 1919,[40] and was succeeded by James J. Kilroy as pastor and as president of Regis and Loyola.

[37][38] Following his positions in New York, Richards was made superior of Manresa Island in Norwalk, Connecticut, where he received Jesuit scholastics and priests from the Diocese of Hartford during the summer for their retreats.