Vocations and ordination

Surrounded by family, friends and supporters, Father Brian Fallon and four other newly ordained priests celebrated their first Masses last weekend, just one day after their May 26 ordination at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. It was a culminating moment, a realization of all the hard work they had achieved through their years of formation in the seminary and a visible “yes” to God’s vocational calling.

MANCHESTER, England -- Seventeen former Anglican priests were made deacons in one of the largest group ordinations in the modern history of the Catholic Church in Britain.

All the deacons will serve in the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, which in January 2011 became the first ordinariate to be set up under "Anglicanorum coetibus," the apostolic constitution issued by Pope Benedict XVI in November 2009 to allow the group reception of Anglicans.

I met a young priest in Fairfax, Va., last week. Of course "young" is a relative term. Everyone around me gets younger with each passing year.

Father Jaffe had been at the parish for less than a week and was the priest on call for the local hospital. It was 2 a.m. when his pager went off. A couple had lost their 8-year-old son hours before and the mother wouldn't let go of his body.