LOS ANGELES, CA – Father Paul Collins, LT, USNR, a prospective Catholic U.S. Navy chaplain, was ordained a priest on Saturday, May 31, in his home Archdiocese of Los Angeles, CA. The new priest expects to go on active duty three years from now, providing pastoral care to Catholic sailors, Marines, Coast Guard members, and their families, with endorsement and faculties from the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA (AMS).
In a solemn Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Father Collins received the sacrament of holy orders from Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles through the laying of hands and the prayer of consecration invoking the Holy Spirit. AMS Auxiliary Bishop Neal J. Buckon concelebrated the 9:00 a.m. ordination Mass. Among those in the pews were the new priest’s entire immediate family.
Father Collins, 33, is a 2016 graduate of California State University, Northridge, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) Degree in Psychology. In May he earned a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) from St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, CA, where he completed his formational studies. The new priest will invest the first three years of his ministry serving in Los Angeles area parishes, gaining pastoral experience before acceding to active duty under his co-sponsored seminarian agreement with the AMS.
Father Collins says he began to realize his calling to be a priest when he was 21 while serving as a missionary in Peru. “After returning to the States,” he says, “it became very clear over time that nothing was going to be fulfilling to me outside of responding to my vocation.” He looks forward to serving Catholics in the sea services, particularly “hearing confessions and forming people in the faith.”
Father Collins is among 34 Catholic U.S. Military chaplain candidates currently enrolled in the Co-Sponsored Seminarian Program (CSP), a vocations partnership between the AMS and cooperating U.S. dioceses and archdioceses and religious communities around the country. The CSP was set up in the 1980s to encourage priestly military service. It has become an indispensable resource in AMS efforts to relieve a shortage of Catholic chaplains in all branches of the U.S. Military.
Those efforts are paying off. Last year, nine co-sponsored priests acceded to active duty as military chaplains. Another nine priests, including Father Collins, are being ordained this year.
The Navy, where Father Collins will eventually serve, currently has 47 active-duty Catholic chaplains, serving well over 100,000 Sailors, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen and their families spread around the world. The Navy, like all other branches, needs many more priests.
Young men interested in discerning a priestly vocation, and the vocation within a vocation to serve those who serve in the U.S. Military, can find more information at milarch.org/vocations, or may contact AMS Vocations Director Father Paul-Anthony Halladay at [email protected] or (202) 719-3600.
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