(OSV News) — Father James Musgrave III, 39, a Detroit native who is one of more than 400 men ordained to the priesthood in the United States this year, came late not only to his discernment, but also to faith itself.
He grew up as a “none” and was not baptized until he was 19, while he was a student at Hillsdale College.
That, according to the annual survey of new priests conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, puts him in a tiny group. Overall, 93% of the survey respondents said they had been baptized Catholic as infants.
Although Father Musgrave attended Detroit Catholic Central High School, “I had different priorities at the time,” he told OSV News. “I didn’t take it seriously,” but recalls now that he “always felt most at home in the Catholic Church.”
Learning to follow Jesus and pray led to discernment
He attended medical school at East Tennessee State University for more than two years before having what he remembers as “an identity crisis.” That’s when his discernment began in earnest: “Learning how to pray. Following, in love with Jesus.”
He didn’t give up medicine entirely, becoming the director of graduate enrollment management at the University of Michigan Medical School while he became active in Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish in Plymouth, Michigan.
There, he said he learned “what true discipleship means.” With a group of adults helping him, he “learned how to pray. How to put Jesus at the center of myself.”
Eventually, he said, a priest told him “to ask Jesus, ‘What do you want for my life?'”
That sent him to Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit with the assistance of the Labouré Society, which helped cover his student-loan debt. He was one of four ordained at the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament. He’s now assigned to St. Hugo of the Hills Parish in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
Meandering paths to the priesthood, following Christ
Journeys to the priesthood quite often are on meandering paths, as noted by Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis on May 30 at the ordination Mass for six men at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul, Minnesota.
“I found myself marveling that the Lord would have placed a holy desire for priesthood in the hearts of a bridge builder, a college basketball player, an aspiring doctor and a linguist; or that he would have sparked an even deeper love for him as they came to study the ancient church fathers in dusty Latin tomes or gave tours of the holy sites of Rome and Jerusalem,” the archbishop said. “The Holy Spirit blows where he wills, and as Pope Francis often said, we have a God of surprises.”
On May 30 at St. Mark Catholic Church in Huntersville, North Carolina, Bishop Michael T. Martin ordained 10 men to the priesthood — the most ordained at one time in the history of the Diocese of Charlotte.
“You have to love the people of God you’re being sent out to serve,” Bishop Martin said in his homily. “His sheep are every human person on the face of the Earth, every person in whatever school or parish, every community, every hospital or nursing home. Wherever you go, love them all … you cannot wait for them to come to you, you have to go out to them.”
CARA’s ordinand survey reported that 6 in 10 responding ordinands (62%) are Caucasian. One in 6 (17%) is Hispanic/Latino. One in 10 (11%) is Asian/Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian. One in 20 (5%) is African/African American/Black.
The three most common countries of birth among the foreign-born are Vietnam (5% of all responding ordinands), Mexico (3%), and Colombia (2%).
Twenty-six percent of the respondents in the CARA survey were born outside the United States. They represented 35% of ordinands in religious orders and 24% of ordinands to diocesan priesthood.
Youth retreats illuminate path to priesthood
The current class of ordinands are, on average, 33 years old at ordination with half between 26 and 31 years old, and the other half between 31 and 75 years old.
Falling squarely into those categories is Father Kaique Duarte Santos, 30, ordained June 6 at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Fall River, Massachusetts. This summer, Father Santos is assigned to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish in North Falmouth, Massachusetts.
Faith was always part of his life before he entered the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in South Orange, New Jersey. He was born in Teófilo Otoni, Brazil, the youngest of three children of Aldair Burmann, a gemstone cutter, and his wife, Marizete, a teacher.
Two family tragedies created what he called “a spiritual questioning” about the meaning of life: His brother Victor was killed in an accident in late 2008, and his father died just two months later.
“God gave me the grace to get through that,” he told OSV News.
Youth retreats in 2010 and 2011 convinced him that the priesthood could be in his future. “That was the first time I saw people praying like they really meant it,” he recalled. “I was used to seeing people go to church because they felt they had to.”
He joined the Brazilian Canção Nova Community, a charismatic community connected to the Salesians, in 2015 and attended a retreat at a Carthusian monastery. Learning that Fall River Bishop Edgar M. da Cunha was born in Brazil clinched his decision about his vocation. Bishop da Cunha was the first Brazilian-born bishop in the U.S., when he was appointed in 2014.
From Da Nang to Dubuque
CARA’s ordinand survey reports that about half the respondents said they were between the ages of 3 and 16 when they first considered the priesthood, with another half between 16 and 51, for an average age of 16.
For Father Thiet Van Hoang, 35, that moment came when he was 11 and attended the ordination Mass of his uncle, Father Huong Hoang.
As the fourth of six children in Ha Tinh, Vietnam, he remembers that his family attended liturgy at Ke Dong Parish twice daily, for morning Mass and vespers, the evening prayer of the Church.
But initially, at University of Da Nang, he pursued another career and earned a degree in computer science, becoming a software developer for two years.
However, he told OSV News, he had always sensed his calling. There was no drama and no questioning. He just knew. He arrived in the U.S. in 2018 and enrolled in the University of St. Mary of the Lake, widely known as Mundelein Seminary, in the Chicago suburb of Mundelein.
He was one of four new priests ordained May 23 at the Cathedral of St. Raphael in Dubuque, Iowa, for the Archdiocese of Dubuque. He’s assigned to the Calmar Pastorate in northeast Iowa. “I know that area well enough,” he told OSV News, since he was earlier assigned an internship there.
Kurt Jensen writes for OSV News from Washington. Contributing to this story were Joe Ruff of The Catholic Spirit, and Christina Lee Knauss of the Catholic News Herald.
