Diocesan Priesthood Testimonies

Archbishop Dennis Hart

Testimony of Archbishop Dennis Hart
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Bishop Christopher Prowse

Testimony of Bishop Christopher Prowse, Bishop of Sale

I became a priest because I felt Jesus calling me to this special vocation. Jesus calls me still. It is a gentle but very deep invitation everyday to be the sort of person Jesus wants me to be. I have become a servant in the Church. I proclaim the Good News found in the scriptures. I lead the people in the celebration of the Sacraments and encourage the community of the parish to grow in faith.

Deacon Nicholas Pearce

Deacon Nicholas Pearce was featured in The Age's Good Weekend Magazine in December 2009.

It was 38 degrees, the middle of a scorching Roman summer, and the three million pilgrims attending World Youth Day in August 2000 had plunged the ancient city into chaos. Inside St Peter’s Basilica, a noisy crowd was being herded through like cattle. Hardly the conditions, one would have thought, for a private spiritual experience. But, as Nicholas Pearce passed in front of the high altar, he saw a space open up at the barricade. “I knelt down and prayed. It was at that moment that I felt something within myself saying, ‘I want you to be a priest.’ I don’t know whether it was a voice … but I felt this great sense of peace.”

Fr Andrew Keswick

Andrew was just a young boy when he first felt a call to the priesthood. He saw that the priest was the instrument through which the gift of the Eucharist is brought before us. The privilege of being a man through whom God acts in this most special way made a deep impression on his heart. This, along with the fact that the priest has a very special connection with the people to whom he ministered made Andrew want to share in this twofold relationship with God and his people. It was not long after that that Andrew expressed his desire to become a priest. He was only a young boy at the time. But the call and the desire were strong.

Fr Anthony Denton

Testimony of Fr Anthony Denton, Director of Vocations for the Archdiocese of Melbourne

Writing the history of one’s vocation is not an easy thing to do, because in the words of Pope John Paul II, a vocation is gift and mystery. On the one hand it is mysterious, almost elusive so that when we think we have grasped it we realize that there is so much more that we don’t understand. Faced with the reality of a supernatural call from God to serve him, we flounder with its implications for our life.

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