Bishop Earl Fernandes told the Catholic Men’s Luncheon Club in his annual address to the group that the diocese is making progress in the two critical areas he identified – vocations and evangelization – when he was installed and ordained as the 13th bishop of Columbus on May 31, 2022, but more progress is needed.
Speaking at the club’s monthly gathering in Patrick Hall at Columbus St. Patrick Church on Friday, Oct. 5, the bishop outlined some of the initiatives the diocese has launched to establish a culture that promotes evangelization and vocations.
A surge in vocations has drawn international and national attention from Vatican News, Our Sunday Visitor and other publications. After there were no ordinations to the priesthood in 2022, this May the diocese celebrated five new priestly ordinations. Another three men are to be ordained priests in May 2025.
Along with the ordinations, the number of seminarians has dramatically increased. Three years ago, there were just 17 men in seminary for the diocese. Last year, the diocese welcomed 16 new seminarians. And in August, another 10 entered, swelling the ranks of diocesan seminarians to 40 overall.
“We are beginning to create a culture of vocations, and we need your help to continue to build that culture,” Bishop Fernandes told the men assembled for the luncheon.
“A couple years ago, I spoke at a SEEK conference in St. Louis about being a spiritual entrepreneur,” the bishop continued. “The spiritual entrepreneur is one who doesn't wait for people to come to him; rather, he goes out, he seizes the initiative, he’s willing to take risks against competition. He’s also a person with integrity and good character who is able to build other people up and develop their skill set. And finally, he is a servant leader who's willing to sacrifice himself before others.”
With such a dramatic increase in vocations, the diocese initiated “A Good and Growing Need” collection last February to help offset the cost of seminary formation. During the upcoming weekend of Nov. 2-3, which marks National Vocation Awareness Week, there will be a special collection for Columbus seminarians.
Bishop Fernandes credited Father William Hahn, the Director of Vocations, who in July also became a vicar general for the diocese, for helping to build a climate conducive to vocational discernment. Father Hahn is assisted by newly ordained Father Michael Haemmerle, the associate vocation director and parochial vicar at Westerville St. Paul the Apostle Church.
The diocese has taken a proactive approach to fostering vocations under the guidance of Father Hahn. In addition to Come and See Weekends at the Pontifical College Josephinum and the annual Quo Vadis summer retreat for high school students, Andrew Dinners are offered four times as year in different regions of the diocese to give young men an opportunity to ask questions and to hear vocation stories from the bishop, priests and seminarians. The Bishop did a special event at the Basilica in Carey, Ohio, for Spanish-speakers who were unable to attend the Andrew Dinners but who were discerning a call.
Melchizedek Project meetings, led by regional vocation promoters, are regularly held throughout the diocese for young men considering a priestly or religious vocation. Priests have been asked to encourage any young men who might potentially have a calling to think about religious life. And missionary evangelization groups such as St. Paul’s Outreach (SPO) and the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) are making an impact on college campuses, particularly at Ohio State University.
Similarly, young women are expressing interest in religious life. Earlier this month, more than 230 young women attended the Serra Club of North Columbus’ annual vocations luncheon at the Josephinum. In late October, the annual Marian Dinner sponsored by the diocese will take place at Columbus St. Andrew Church, where representatives of orders will be sharing information about their congregations with young women who are discerning.
In September, Sister Jose Mary Ruffner, an Ohio State University graduate who was involved in SPO during college, professed her first vows with the Order of the Most Holy Savior of St. Bridget (known as the Bridgettine Sisters), who have a convent near Columbus Holy Family Church.
“Father Hahn has deployed these sorts of strategies to try to help build the culture of vocations,” Bishop Fernandes said. “We’ve asked priests to try to identify who they think might make good priests and we ask you (the lay faithful) to do the same.
“If we want to have a strong Church, we need to have strong families, because vocations are born in the family.”
In recent years, the diocese has welcomed the arrival of clergy and religious priests and sisters from orders based in India, a host of African nations, Poland, Mexico and many other countries. Each has a particular charism which complements the work of parishes. Many are ministering at parishes, schools and hospitals and offering pastoral care to different language and ethnic groups.
The Bishop welcomed their presence, noting that “We are now mission territory here in the United States.”
In addition to priests and religious, lay missionaries and ecclesial movements play an active role in the diocese as well. There are approximately 180 of them engaged in a variety of ministries throughout the Diocese, including on college campuses, such as FOCUS at Ohio State and Ohio Northern University and SPO at OSU, and in parish communities, including the Missionary Servants of the Word (Misioneros Servidores de la Palabra) and Urban Encounter Ministries. Among the lay ecclesial movements present in the Diocese, in addition to the MSPs, are Communion and Liberation and Columbus Catholic Charismatic Renewal.
“To give you an indication of how effective these missionaries are, at Ohio State two years ago 20 people entered the Church and last year there were 30,” Bishop Fernandes said. “This year, they have 35. … Every Sunday now, they tell me 1,000 students come to Mass. We renewed the worship space and created a new student lounge and a coffee shop, so they get their coffee and evangelize, and this peer-to-peer evangelization appears to be working.
“At Ohio Northern, the last five years almost no one entered the Church. This year, with the FOCUS missionaries there, 13 people are entering the Church, and 10 are university students.”
SPO has around 40 college-aged students living in their households at Ohio State who are praying together. Urban Encounter Ministries missionaries are living in the Hilltop area of Columbus and bringing Christ to the poor and addicted in an economically depressed area. The Missionary Servants of the Word are spread throughout the Diocese in Columbus, Cardington, and Portsmouth.
Lay ecclesial movements (Communion and Liberation, Columbus Catholic Charismatic Renewal, etc) and young adult groups at several parishes as well as Young Catholic Professionals are active in the diocese.
“Their work is bearing fruit,” the bishop said. “But, in addition, if we want to have a strong Church, we need strong families.”
Strong families begin with strong marriages, and the diocese is implementing a new catechumenal model of marriage preparation that parallels the OCIA process. The goal is not only to equip couples with knowledge of the Catholic faith and the Sacrament of Matrimony but to insert them into the life of a parish community through mentoring and accompaniment.
“Building up families, the community of believers, is important as secularization sets in,” the bishop said.
Faith formation begins with parents as the primary educators of their children and continues in Catholic schools.
“We now have chaplains and religious in our high schools who are starting to make inroads to bridge the gap between the institutional church and the charismatic church so young people have the faith,” Bishop Fernandes said.
Educating children in the faith sometimes involves educating parents who have not received catechesis; thus, today we speak of evangelizing catechesis. “They are largely cultural Catholics who want a private school but not necessarily Catholic school,” the bishop said. “The push will be toward evangelizing beyond the students to the parents and the families with family-based catechetics.
“Our Catholic school teachers have been very intentional about trying to form (students) as Catholics,” he continued. “Our Catholic schools are not simply private schools plus religion class. I have zero interest in providing private education for the wealthy who have no interest in the life of faith or the Church. I do have great interest in having schools for the underprivileged who can come to the faith.”
There’s so much interest in Catholic schools that almost all of them in the diocese are at capacity. Some of the schools are blessed with a rich diversity of cultures with families who are Eastern rite Catholics, including the Syro-Malabar, Eritrean, Byzantine, Maronite, and Melkite Catholics, as well as Latino and African and African-American Catholics.
“We are growing so rapidly that our schools are at capacity,” Bishop Fernandes said. “We’re at the point where we’re going to need to build new Catholic elementary schools, but we need $10 million or $15 million or maybe more for each new elementary school.
“We’ve done a feasibility study for a new high school that could cost $30 million to $35 million just to build. There are some who want an all-girls’ high school here in Columbus, and it’s a great idea, but you’ve got to have $30 million. That’s the kind of money it’s going to take.”
Bishop Fernandes also spoke about some of the challenges the diocese faces to accommodate rapid population growth expected in central Ohio that includes the influx of immigrants.
He noted that there were an estimated 278,000 Catholics in the diocese in 2022 when he arrived here, but the numbers have continued to rise to 344,000 in 2023 and more than 500,000 this year.
The Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission forecasts the population in the 15-county central Ohio region to reach more than 3 million in the next 25 years with the addition of 725,000 new residents.
To illustrate the diversity in the diocese, Columbus St. Stephen the Martyr Church, whose future was uncertain during Real Presence Real Future, is now a predominantly Spanish-speaking parish on the west side of the city, which has 7 Sunday Masses and had 125 young people confirmed in 2024, the same number of confirmations that took place at Westerville St. Paul Church, the largest parish in the diocese.
Large numbers of Spanish-speaking youth also were confirmed at Columbus Our Lady Star of the New Evangelization Parish (at the former Holy Name Church), Columbus St. James the Less, at Columbus St. Agnes Church on the west side of the city, and at St. Mary (German Village)
“We’re making all kinds of inroads in evangelization,” Bishop Fernandes said, “but the number of people who need to be evangelized is growing and growing and growing. Again, evangelization is not only the work of bishops and priest, it’s the work of the laity.
“And with more people coming here, we need to make our parishes vibrant so that people are engaged in the faith.”
Spearheading those efforts are Father Adam Streitenberger, the diocesan vicar for evangelization and the director of the St. Thomas More Newman Center at Ohio State University, and Dr. Marlon De La Torre, director of the diocese’s Department of Evangelization.
But Bishop Fernandes noted that spreading the faith takes more than leaders providing direction. “We need boots on the ground,” he said.
The bishop has called on the lay faithful to carry out the mission of evangelization in the parishes, workplaces and daily interactions with fellow Catholics and non-Catholics. He asked the men to use their gifts and talents in their parishes and also to invite someone they don’t know to their church, especially those from the ethnic groups arriving in Columbus.
“While building a culture of vocations and evangelization, we also need to think about a culture of stewardship, not just financial, but stewardship of our sacred mission,” the bishop said. “If we want our children and our children’s children to have faith, then we have to make sacrifices.
“We know that there are a number of people – all people – who need a living relationship with Jesus Christ.”
