Freshly ordained in the city: meet Fr. Jeremy Canna from Brooklyn

Last month, I posted about my friend Jeremy Canna, one of 13 new priests ordained for the Diocese of Brooklyn. This weekend, he is profiled in The Wall Street Journal: 

Father Canna, a slight, hyper-articulate Marine Park native who walks through life chin first, is among the youngest of the 13 priests just ordained by the Diocese of Brooklyn—the largest class in the nation this year.

The diverse crew included immigrants from Poland and Haiti, a middle-aged former flight attendant and an opera composer.

Father Canna, in contrast, was ordained straight out of seminary. In an era offering many paths to the priesthood, his journey was a bit of a throwback. But his tale has its own twists.

While his parents are committed Roman Catholics, they weren’t prepared for what happened when they sent their 14-year-old son to Cathedral Preparatory Seminary in Elmhurst.

He attended Mass daily and was stunned by the church’s celebration of the liturgical year—Advent, Christmas, the feast days. He fell in love with Catholicism.

“With all its problems, it had this beauty to it that was worth giving up my life for,” he said…

…He is a math nut, a musician and a self-described introvert. He imagines he could have been an accountant, quietly crunching numbers in some corporate office.

The life of a parish priest, on the other hand, demands constant immersion in the challenging gamut of human experience: celebrations, sickness and death.

If not for God’s calling, said Father Canna, “I’d be a lot more escapist than I am now.”

Two days into his five-year assignment at Our Lady of the Snows parish in Floral Park, Queens, he admitted to feeling a little lost in his oversize office, sparsely decorated with half-deflated “Good Luck!” balloons and the new paperback from Pope Francis.

…Father Canna expects he can serve as a good example of a young Catholic and work with doubters by carefully explaining the reasons for the church’s positions.

“But God has to do the rest in terms of getting them to accept it,” he said.

Read it all.