Deacon Stephen Petrill has been named director of the diocesan Office of the Diaconate and assumes the role July 1, following Deacon Frank Iannarino, the director of ministry and life for the permanent diaconate who will retire at the end of June.

Deacon Petrill has served as director of diaconal formation since May 2023. He had been associate director of the Office of the Diaconate since November 2022.

“I’m really humbled to be asked to serve in this role, really excited and mainly grateful,” Deacon Petrill said. “I look forward to helping the bishop, the priests, the deacons and the people, the diocese.”

As director, Deacon Petrill will continue his duties overseeing the formation process for men who aspire and are in candidacy for ordination to the Order of Diaconate. He will also support the newly ordained in their assignments after ordination and communicate Bishop Earl Fernandes’ vision for the diaconate in the diocese.

Deacon Petrill said he will “help the diaconate in this diocese to be the best it can be under all of our human limitations, including mine.”

He also serves as a deacon at Dublin St. Brigid of Kildare Church. He was ordained to the diaconate in 2016 by Bishop Emeritus Frederick Campbell and was first assigned to Powell St. Joan of Arc Church before coming to St. Brigid, his home parish, two years ago.

“Next to my family, speaking personally, the greatest joy of my life is being a deacon,” he said. “It’s a lot of work, but so is anything that’s worth doing.”

In addition to his work in the Office of the Diaconate and service at St. Brigid, Deacon Petrill is a full-time professor of psychology at the Ohio State University. His research involves various intellectual disabilities, including Dyslexia.

Deacon Petrill received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s and doctorate in psychology from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He completed postdoctoral studies in London.

Prior to his work at Ohio State, Deacon Petrill was a professor at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut and Penn State University.

A Cleveland native, Deacon Petrill moved to Columbus in 2006 with his wife, Dawn, and three children. He met Deacon Iannarino, a deacon at St. Brigid, a few years later. 

Deacon Petrill said he had experienced a calling to the diaconate. He eventually reached out to Deacon Iannarino, who then became his formation director.

Deacon Iannarino served as director of the Office of the Diaconate for more than three decades. 

“He leaves a long history,” Deacon Petrill said. “He’s formed most of the deacons in the diocese.”

Deacon Frank Iannarino

Deacon Iannarino began in October 1991 when Bishop Emeritus James Griffin, who ordained him to the Order of Diaconate in 1989, established the diocesan Office of the Diaconate. The permanent diaconate was restored in the United States in 1968 after the close of the Second Vatican Council.

Iannarino served at St. Brigid, which was then a new parish, for two years before his ordination and continued there as a permanent deacon after his ordination.

Now, as he prepares for retirement, he is confident the Office of the Diaconate will be in good hands with Deacon Petrill.

“He is the perfect successor,” he said. “I’ve known him for a long time – he and his wife and his three kids – and he is just the perfect person.

“He’s a professor at Ohio State; he’s an educator, and he’s a theologian. He’s just the perfect person to take over the office.”

Since Deacon Iannarino began his work as director in 1991, he served under four bishops: Bishop Griffin, Bishop Campbell, Bishop Robert Brennan and Bishop Fernandes. Deacon Iannarino led efforts in guiding men preparing for the diaconate and in their assignments post-ordination.

However, he does not see his work as reflecting him.

“It’s never ever been about me,” he said. “It’s always been about helping these guys learn to be Christ the Servant. Whenever anybody says something to me like, ‘What do you do as director?’ I say, ‘I helped the bishop make or form deacons and then I helped the bishop, priests and deacons enjoy their ordained ministry together.”

Deacon Iannarino said he reached out to Bishop Fernandes about adding an associate, so someone could be trained and able to assume the office after him. For the last few years of his 33 in the office, he had Deacon Petrill by his side.

“He was with me for two years,” Deacon Iannarino said. “And now he’s ready to go, and I’m ready to step back. I may not be the director, but I told him, I said, ‘I’m a phone call away.’”

In addition to his work in the Office of the Diaconate and serving at St. Brigid, Deacon Iannarino worked as an educator.

He first started teaching at Portsmouth Notre Dame High School before coming to Columbus Bishop Watterson High School in 1977 as a religion teacher and then serving as head of the religion department. He was also the school’s head golf coach for several years.

Deacon Iannarino credited Msgr. John Cody, who married him and his wife, Peggy, baptized their three children and formerly directed the diaconate school in the diocese, for prompting him to consider the diaconate.

“I love the image of Jesus the Servant, always loved it,” he said. “I thought, well, maybe that’s what the deacon is. Deacon is the image of Jesus the Servant.”

Deacon Iannarino recalled being offered the role of director for the new Office of the Diaconate in the early ‘90s. Msgr. Joseph Hendricks, then Father Hendricks, the diocesan chancellor at the time, approached him after celebrating an early morning Sunday Mass at St. Brigid.

“He said, ‘I need to see you immediately,’” Deacon Iannarino recalled. “That was the longest walk in my life because I thought, ‘What did I say?’ This is the chancellor for the diocese. ‘Did I say something stupid from the pulpit?’

“I’m only 37 years old – I was ordained at the age of 36 – I’d only been ordained for about a year, and he said, ‘Bishop Griffin would like to appoint you as the director of the diaconate, and my mouth dropped.”

Deacon Iannarino said the bishop was seeking an individual who was an educator, theologian and deacon to lead the office. He “fit the bill.”

After remaining with the office for 33 years, Deacon Iannarino expressed gratitude to those who offered their talents in the office alongside him.

He recognized Jean Morris, his longtime secretary who served for years in the Office of the Diaconate before retiring. Morris’ husband, Deacon Jim Morris, serves at Hilliard St. Brendan the Navigator Church.

“Right now, we have Patty Cooley. Before her, we had Rebecca Price over at The (Catholic) Foundation, and before her, we had her daughter, Kelly (Cooley), who was my secretary,” he said.

“They ran the day-to-day operation of the office. They were just great.”

As he prepares to enter retirement, Deacon Iannarino might be found on a golf course. A lover of golf, he also recognizes parallels between the sport and life as a follower of Christ.

“When I would teach my class at Watterson, I would always tell people, to my students: The two most important times in your life are now and the hour of your death. Those are the two most important times in your life,” he said.

“As a golf coach, I would always teach my golfers that the most important shot in golf is always the one right there in front of you.”

Permanent deacons serve part time or full time in parishes, schools, hospitals, prisons or other ministries. They assist bishops and priests in proclaiming the Gospel at Mass, administering the sacraments and doing charitable work.

Deacon formation consists of four stages: inquiry, aspirancy, candidacy and post-ordination. There are currently 10 candidates for the diaconate in the diocese. They are set to be ordained in August.

Once ordained, a deacon spends five years in the post-ordination stage, during which they continue to take classes. Every four years, a new class of men is selected for diaconate formation.