When the members of the Fernandes family learned that their brother was going to be named the new bishop of Columbus, they couldn’t have been more thrilled for him.  

But after the initial shock and excitement died down, one of his nieces asked an important question: “Does this mean he can’t come for Christmas?”

“My kids are unbelievably close to my brother,” said Eustace Fernandes, 48, the youngest of the five Fernandes brothers and the father of five children. “My 14-year-old daughter, Felicity, she had a big smile on her face when she heard, and then she kind of teared up a little bit. She’s incredibly proud.

“He’s still part of our family, and he’s always going to be, but this is where God is calling him now, a new phase in his life, his vocation, this ministry in Columbus. And we just have to pray for him and support him.”

On Friday, April 1, the night before the appointment was made public, then-Father Earl Fernandes had first shared the good news with his immediate family, which includes the four brothers, their wives and 15 nieces and nephews. 

The next morning, he left brother Ashley Fernandes’ home in Dublin to drive to the diocesan offices in downtown Columbus for a news conference after the Holy See made the announcement public a few hours earlier.

“My youngest son is his godson, and he pulled us into a room and he told us,” Ashley said. “And, oh, my gosh, I went crazy. I was like screaming for like five minutes straight. It was like Ohio State won the national championship, the Pittsburgh Steelers had won the Super Bowl. It was all of that. I was so excited.”

Ashley, 50, a Columbus pediatrician, medical ethicist and professor at Ohio State University, had an inkling earlier that week when his brother said he was visiting Toledo to see his friend Bishop Daniel Thomas and also their beloved mother, Thelma, who is suffering from dementia and other ailments that prevented her from attending the ordination and installation of the second-youngest of her five sons on Tuesday, May 31 at Westerville St. Paul Church.

“So I started thinking, Oh, my gosh, you know what? He’s been made a bishop,” Ashley said. “Why would he go from Cincinnati to Toledo to talk to my mom and then Bishop Thomas. Maybe he’s getting advice on how to be a bishop.

“My brothers are like, ‘You’re crazy. My oldest brother, Karl, is a very practical person and he’s like, ‘He’s too young. He’s definitely qualified, but we can’t get that lucky.’”

Ashley’s suspicions were correct. And, at age 49, Earl Fernandes became the youngest Roman Catholic bishop to lead a U.S. diocese. 

“I’m not surprised,” said Deacon Trevor Fernandes, 53, who serves at St. Michael Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Rossford, Ohio, outside of Toledo and has been a Lucas County Probate Court magistrate for 24 years. The second-oldest of the five brothers, he proclaimed the Gospel at Tuesday’s ordination and installation Mass.

“When someone is at the top of their class in high school, in college, in medical school – and has everything that the world, the flesh and the devil tell you is the best thing for you and you won’t be happy with anything else – he has chosen the narrow way,” Trevor said. “He chose the cross.

“And the reason I think he’ll be a very good bishop is because he never wanted to be one. All he ever wanted when he felt called to Holy Orders was to be a pastor of a parish, have a youth group that was active, have a school and be able to interact with families like we did when we were growing up, to be able to laugh and cry with them and to hold their hands.”

All of the brothers have achieved great success in their careers in medicine and law, with three of them becoming doctors and one a magistrate. And their children have shown similar academic prowess, including one niece who is a third-year medical student at Ohio State.

But they agree that the new bishop was the most academically gifted.

“He’s an incredibly bright, incredibly talented person,” said Eustace, a pulmonologist and critical care physician in Fort Wayne, Indiana, who graduated from medical school at Ohio State. “And that can sometimes present challenges because he could say, ‘I could be good at this. I could be good at that.’

“I’m sure he could have been an excellent husband, an excellent physician. Ashley, Earl and myself were all in medical school at the same time, and Earl would lay on a couch half asleep, flipping through his notebooks, watching ESPN, and do great on exams, where I had to shut myself away for like a month and study. He had a lot of natural gifts. 

“But with my observation, as his youngest brother and his roommate for 18 years, he was always restless in those things. And when he really pursued the priesthood, there was a sense that he was invigorated. And it was really like he was going out in the deep with the Lord, and he had a peace about him and an engagement about him that was different.”

The brothers all have stories to tell about their now-bishop brother while they were growing up on the east side of Toledo in a modest home. 

Ashley shared a story about a boxing match while mom and dad were away from the house between himself and Earl when they were ages 5 and 4, with one wearing mittens and the other with bare knuckles. Earl took a couple of shots to the face and still kept smiling before the pain hit him. Then the boys panicked about how to explain the situation to mom and dad when they returned.

Eustace joked that his side of the bedroom the brothers shared in their parents’ home was always messy while Earl’s was “pristine.”

Ashley said he saw certain qualities in Earl at a young age that gave him an inkling that his brother might someday be called to the priesthood. Like most kids, Earl participated in sports and was involved in academic-type extracurricular activities.

“He was not someone who would go around shouting the rosary. It was not like outward signs,” Ashley said. “But it was kind of more the way he treated other people. He wasn’t an aggressive person or he didn’t make fun of people like a lot of boys do.

“There was always something about him that made people think, well, maybe. … He was much more thoughtful about his faith, and he handled people’s questions in a very kind, diplomatic way. 

“When people would question the faith or criticize the Church, he would talk to them in a different way than my brothers and I would have done. We might have been trying to win an argument, and he was not pushing back but drawing them in.”

Almost everyone who has come in contact with Bishop Fernandes remarks about the smile he constantly wears, even during Mass.

“He’ll be at the consecration, or maybe after the consecration, and all of a sudden he’ll start smiling,” Ashley said. “And my wife will always comment on how joyful he seems.”

Trevor says there’s a story behind his brother’s smile during the consecration that goes back to India, where the two oldest boys were born before their parents moved to America.

Their devout Catholic father, Sydney, a longtime physician who passed away in 2019 at age 82, had assisted at Traditional Latin Mass as the server at St. John the Evangelist Church in Bombay during the 1960s for an elderly Portuguese priest. After the priest said the words of consecration, his face would flash a “radiant smile, with sometimes tears streaming down his face,” Trevor related. “And it made a huge impression on my dad.

“So when you see Earl celebrate Mass or the sacraments, sometimes even when it seems like it’s inappropriate to smile, Earl is lit with that fire, the joy of Christ, the joy of vocation. If other people burn like a candle, he is lit like an alabaster jar.

“He’s a lot like my dad. He’s cool under pressure. But it’s the glow that warms the heart.”

One of Bishop Fernandes’ defining characteristics, his brothers agree, is love for families and children, which stems from their loving and devoted Catholic parents who emigrated from India in 1970 with little money and no family in the United States.

“It is a witness to my parents and how they allowed God to dwell in our family and how they allowed God’s glory to shine through them in order to raise us and try to help us raise our children,” Eustace said. “That to me, that’s the final word on it.”

One of Eustace’s five children, 19-year-old Ignatius, came from Armenia 12 years ago through an adoption facilitated by his priest brother, who had been there to preach a Holy Week retreat for the Missionaries of Charity sisters. 

Ignace, as he’s called now, was difficult to place because he was born with spina bifida. But Eustace and his wife, Anne, a physical therapist turned stay-at-home homeschooling mother, felt as though God was using them to adopt a child with special needs. 

“My brother Earl has always been part of our family,” said Eustace, whose children range in age from 9 to 20. “Our youngest son (Leo) was very ill at birth and was in the ICU for 10 days, and he completed the Rite of Baptism for him.

“And the other kids, if they need an opinion, if they’re struggling with something, you know, big or small, he’s always taking the time to interact with them, to be an uncle, and just be very gentle with them in a way that a parent isn’t always equipped to be. He’s been incredibly busy, but we’ve never felt like he was inaccessible to our family.”

In addition to celebrating the sacraments with family members, Bishop Fernandes had the special privilege of being with his father at his death and at his funeral Mass and with his brother, Trevor, when he was ordained a deacon.

“We were taught by mom and dad that in all things charity and in all things humility,” Trevor said. “We were blessed with the proverbial immigrant dream. And, at the same time, it is that quiet candle of faith, that pilot light, that burns in him. It is that fire lit by the most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary – those twin hearts – that have powered our family since our earliest days.”

Ashley believes his brother’s background as a parish priest, high school teacher, seminary professor, academic dean and church administrator has prepared him well to  lead a diocese during difficult times.

“Every single experience he’s had is going to make him a better bishop,” Ashley said, “and has prepared him for his moment. I’m super excited for him.”

Ashley tried to put into perspective for his children the significance of their uncle becoming a bishop.

“I’ve been telling people that I’m calling myself Ashley the Lesser,” he said. “I just got promoted to full professor, and even though I’m the older brother, you can’t imagine how many times people have come up to me and said, ‘You’re the new bishop’s brother.’

“If you think about it, and I was telling my kids, ‘Guys, you can win the Nobel Prize, but unless you become a priest and be like your uncle, you can never be a successor to the Apostles.’”