Former Philadelphia sportswriter, 60, about to be ordained a priest

Let’s hear it for another journalist entering religious life.

From The Boston Globe: 

Kevin Mulligan, about to be ordained a Catholic priest, figures some long and fulfilling days await him. He knows about long days, devotion to duty, seeing a story through to its finish. Soon to turn 60 years old, he spent 25 years as a sportswriter in Philadelphia, including seven seasons as the Eagles beat writer for the Philadelphia Daily News.

“My life is so different now,’’ said Mulligan, reflecting on his former life of deadline writing, 15-hour workdays, and a challenged and shrinking newspaper industry, one he finally said goodbye to in 2006. “As much as I loved what I did when I was writing, you think you are happy . . . you are making a good salary, traveling the world, around good people, sports, the action . . . but I didn’t know happiness until I got here.’’

Here, until his May 16 ordination in his hometown of Philadelphia, is the Pope St. John XXIII National Seminary in Weston. It is a unique, cloistered place of prayer and study where men over age 35, most of them transitioning from nonreligious careers, congregate to begin their journey to the priesthood.

Mulligan, who already wears a deacon’s white Roman collar, is wrapping up his fifth and final year at the seminary. “If I was a horse at Pimlico,’’ he chuckles, “you’d say I was headed to the homestretch.’’ By mid-June, he’ll be assigned to a parish in or around Philly, preaching homilies, administering holy sacraments, directing a flock of worshipers who may or may not realize, hey, he’s that ex-Daily News scribe who for years chronicled Big Five basketball and critiqued the Eagles.

Read it all. 

Photo by Sarah Webb / CatholicPhilly.com