 He was ordained a priest on 24 September 1892.His pastoral assignments led to work in the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, where he became a member of the Canons of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.In the aftermath of the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I and the consequent reorganization of ecclesiastical jurisdictions, Smets served as Apostolic Visitor to Baghdad in 1919–1921.