What have you been up to since SJV?
I entered SJV in 2010 after high school and have since been in seminary in Rome at the North American College, at a parish in Wayzata, and back on staff at SJV. Currently, I’m a doctoral student at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and serve as SJV’s Rome Formation Assistant, helping coordinate their semester abroad experience.
What has it been like living in Rome—both as a college seminarian and now as a priest—through these past two conclave experiences?
There were all these “last things” before Pope Benedict XVI’s retirement—his last audience, his last Mass, the last day of his papacy. It was a mourning process but different since we all knew this was coming. We just lived at St. Peter’s during those February and March days of 2013, constantly there for different events.
I was excited, obviously, for Pope Leo XIV, but it was even cooler for me to see it through the eyes of the seminarians. They were able to experience it all like I did 12 years ago.
Tell us about meeting Cardinal Prevost in November 2024.
He visited the Irish College at an ongoing formation night where we’d have Mass and dinner together as a community. Most weeks, we’d have a guest invited to give a talk or Q&A. When I heard his name at “Habemus Papam,” I’d met him and knew who he was. That was absolutely incredible.
How do you make sense of this transition between popes?
Popes come and go, bishops come and go, pastors come and go, rectors come and go. Not to say these people aren’t important—we’re links in a chain, and we all have a unique work the Lord has given to us. But at the same time, the fact that these people come and go shows that God is bigger than all of it. The Holy Spirit is working despite our finitude and weaknesses. Being the pope is essentially an impossible job with the rapidity of communication and everyone wanting his comments on everything—and not just at the theological level but even in the world and politics . . . I get stressed just thinking about it! Continue to pray for him and have a charity and gentleness toward him. We really have to keep Jesus at the center of everything.
How did your time at SJV prepare you for this chapter?
The emphasis on prayer. I’m realizing how much I need to continue to fight to pray a Holy Hour; it’s not automatic. Also, the culture of authentic masculinity and fatherhood is very much still part of my heart. Even though being a spiritual husband and father by studying
in Rome isn’t what I imagined in my priesthood, this is what the Church imagined for me. SJV gave me that sense of “Your life is not about you. It’s time to put away the boyhood of ‘Let me just do what I want to do’ and become a man.” It’s a daily choice to receive the mission
from outside of myself and make that mine.
Best part of fall?
Play-off baseball.
Currently reading?
Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
This article was originally published in the fall 2025 Vianney News magazine. Read more.