Father David Sizemore says he knew as a teenager that God was calling him to something, but he wasn’t sure that call was to the priesthood until it become too persistent to ignore.
Father Sizemore, 54, pastor of Newark St. Francis de Sales Church for the past five years, said he was the son of an active Catholic mother and an agnostic father and grew up as a member of Columbus Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Church.
“When I was a boy, I was more like my mom and went to Mass and religious education class each week,” he said. “When I was a teenager, I became more like dad and struggled with a belief in God. I also lived a wayward life.”
He said an encounter with Jesus at a healing Mass celebrated by Father Robert DeGrandis, SSJ, in the mid-1980s at Columbus Sacred Heart Church changed his life and set him on the road to the priesthood.
“It’s hard to easily describe,” he said. “It was a moment when I had a profound experience of Jesus’ presence that erased any doubt I had that God existed and that He loved me. During that experience, Jesus said, ‘Now you know I exist, and I love you. What are you going to do with your life?’”
It took several years to answer that question. Father Sizemore was a sophomore at Groveport-Madison High School in the mid-1980s when the encounter occurred. “I graduated from high school and went on to Ohio University (OU) to study business. During this time, I was being mentored spiritually by Father Richard Pendolphi, who was associate pastor at the Church of Our Lady,” he said.
“I also had fallen in love with a young woman and was considering a future with her. Through all of that, I kept being drawn into a deeper relationship with Jesus and kept being confronted by the same question of what I was going to do with my life.
“It became more and more clear that the answer to that question would require taking a risk by entering the seminary to discern the possibility of priesthood. I knew what it was like to be in love with a woman, which was beautiful. But I didn’t really know what priesthood might be like for me, so I needed to place myself in an environment where I could explore this honestly.”
Father Sizemore transferred from OU to the Pontifical College Josephinum, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy in 1990. He went on to Rome, where he received a bachelor’s degree in sacred theology in 1994 from the Pontifical Gregorian University and a Master of Arts degree in spiritual theology in 1996 from the Pontifical Angelicum University.
During his time in Rome, he came back to central Ohio for a year in 1994 and “shadowed” Father Jerome Rodenfels, who was pastor of the New Albany Church of the Resurrection, so he could become more familiar with the work he ultimately wanted to do as pastor of a parish. He was ordained as a priest by Bishop James Griffin in Columbus St. Joseph Cathedral on June 29, 1996.
A few years after his own encounter with Jesus, Father Sizemore said something similar happened to his father, Bill, who died in 1992. “I was in the seminary at the time, and my father was suffering with cancer,” he said. “While in the hospital, he had what is called a ‘near-death experience’ in which he encountered God in a powerful way. I was blessed to be a part of helping him to understand it and of him giving his life to Jesus.
“My dad fell back in love with my mother, who cared for him faithfully during his illness. And when everything that needed to be said was said and everything that needed to be done was done in my dad’s life, my father died, ready to be with God forever. I was blessed to be with him when he passed, holding him in my arms. It was an intimacy in my life that I will always cherish.
“Having these experiences of God’s presence and profound grace had a great impact on my own life. These personal examples of the transformative ways Christ reaches out to us, that these encounters with God are possible for any person – Christ wants to reach us all and transform our lives. This realization kept drawing me toward priesthood and wanting to spend my life helping others come closer to Christ,” Father Sizemore said.
His mother, Phyllis, died this past March, 30 years after her husband’s death. Father Sizemore has three older sisters, Debbie Reida, Lisa Beaudry and Susan Fitz. “Mom always was the one who really influenced us,” he said. “Her witness of attending Mass every weekend, praying daily and serving the poor affected us in ways we didn’t realize until becoming adults.”
Father Sizemore’s first assignment as a priest was to Dublin St. Brigid of Kildare Church from 1996 to 2000. “A large parish like that was a great place for someone like me who considers himself an extreme extrovert, project-oriented and people-oriented,” he said.
“Msgr. (Joseph) Hendricks was pastor there and still is. He encouraged me to do a lot of new things. One in particular was the parish’s marriage mentoring program, in which an engaged couple spends many months with a married couple, who serve as the engaged couple’s mentors, meeting with them regularly and engaging in discussions on all the major aspects of marriage and its impact on every aspect of life.
“I got to put this ministry together. After it was up and running, my role was minimal. It became a laity-run program and is run very well to this day. Its success was an example of how the laity can perform many of the responsibilities once entrusted to priests.
“This and other initiatives helped me see the need to partner with the people in the pews to bring them closer to Christ, making them disciples and teaching them to be disciple makers in a process that’s ongoing and extends itself throughout a parish. St. Brigid’s was a fertile ground for teaching me what was possible when a priest partners with the laity in ministry together.”
After four years in Dublin, Father Sizemore became associate pastor at the cathedral from 2000 to 2002 and Delaware St. Mary Church from 2002 to 2005. While at the cathedral, he completed a Master of Business Administration (MBA) program, which he said has been of great help in every parish he subsequently served. In Delaware, he spent much of his time with the parish’s youth ministry and with restarting a campus ministry at Ohio Wesleyan University, where he was Catholic chaplain.
His first pastorate was at Sunbury St. John Neumann Church, where he served for 12 years before being appointed to his current position. That period coincided with a housing boom in southern Delaware County, which resulted in growth of the Sunbury parish from 400 parishioners in 2005 to 1,800 in 2017. That number continues to rise.
“Two things stand out about my time in Sunbury,” he said. “First is that this was the first time that, with the help of a small, dedicated staff, I began to catch wind of the potential of what the New Evangelization can do for a parish.
“The parish became part of nationwide programs such as Divine Renovation, Amazing Parish and Rebuilt, all of which are focused on parish renewal and designed to make the laity realize how they can be disciples and make disciples of others. The most exhilarating adventure of my life to that point was creating a discipleship culture at St. John Neumann.”
The other major accomplishment there was all the building that had to be done to accommodate the growth – building a new church, parish hall and adoration chapel; making the old church into offices; renovating the rectory; building a pavilion; and purchasing acreage for a possible future school.
“When I was transferred from Sunbury to Newark in 2017, I didn’t think it would be possible to love a parish the way I loved St. John Neumann, but I was wrong,” he said. “I’ve come to feel the same way about St. Francis de Sales because the people here have responded to the New Evangelization and parish and school renewal in the same way they did in Sunbury.”
Unlike the Sunbury parish, St. Francis de Sales has a long history, dating to 1843. Its first pastor, Father Jean-Baptiste Lamy, became the pioneer archbishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico, serving there for 32 years until his resignation in 1885.
“Taking the lessons learned at St. John Neumann about how to set the vision and mission of parish renewal, one of the important things we have done at St. Francis de Sales has involved using the concept of a senior leadership team (SLT) – a group of nine committed people, including myself, from whom flow the decisions for everything that happens in the parish and school. All are on fire for Christ and embrace the concept of prayerful discernment before taking actions,” Father Sizemore said.
“They are supported by about 40 other parish staff members, half paid and half offering their services not for money, but to benefit the mission of the parish because they don’t need the money. They are what is called ‘missionary staff.’”
Father Sizemore said St. Francis and a few other parishes have been testing the SLT concept for the rest of the diocese, which is seeing more pastors adopting this concept.
Since Father Sizemore arrived at St. Francis, the parish has renovated the rectory – made possible through parting gifts to him from St. John Neumann parishioners. Through a $3.25 million capital campaign, the parish also has demolished two buildings and built a new faith and family center and completed much-needed maintenance and renovation to the nearly 140-year-old church and to school buildings.
“My greatest satisfaction has been bringing people to Jesus Christ through the sacraments, faith formation, retreats, Bible studies, conferences, discipleship groups and many other initiatives and opportunities to grow faith,” Father Sizemore said.
“None of this would have been possible without the parishioners believing in what is possible when they move closer to Christ and their willingness to be activated as disciples and disciple makers. They are the true change agents – allowing change to happen first in their lives and then becoming agents of change across our parish and school and into the lives of so many new members they have welcomed to the mission of Jesus Christ here at St. Francis de Sales.”
