October 3, 2025 // Diocese

The Road to Ordination

Scott Warden

Editor-In-Chief

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More photos can be found here.

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Patrick Ernst Joins the Sacred Order of the Diaconate at St. Peter’s Basilica

“How good to sing praise to our God; / how pleasant to give fitting praise,” Psalm 147 begins. “The Lord rebuilds Jerusalem, / and gathers the dispersed of Israel, / Healing the broken / and binding up their wounds. … / Great is Our Lord, vast in power, / with wisdom beyond measure.”

Some translations use the word “brokenhearted” in the third verse, including the New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE) preferred by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, but while only ancient Greek and Syriac translations of the psalms remain, scholars note that the original Hebrew word used here would have been leb shavur, which means “crushed” or “shattered” or, yes, “broken.”

But no one, not even the psalmists, need to remind Michael and Cathy Ernst about the goodness of God and His ability to mend the broken. They saw the Lord work   overtime when their son, Patrick, was a young, accident-prone boy. In fact, one of the most often repeated phrases in the Ernst household was inspired by his rambunctiousness. What’s the Hebrew translation for “Slow down, Patrick!”?

He didn’t listen much then, apparently. And now, the seminarian continues to run full speed toward fulfilling what he has discerned to be God’s will for his life: becoming a priest of Jesus Christ for the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend.

On Thursday, October 2, beneath Bernini’s famed Altar of the Chair inside St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Ernst, 27, took a major step toward that goal as he was ordained to the sacred order of the diaconate – the first stage of the Sacrament of Holy Orders. God willing, the son of St. Pius X Parish will be ordained a priest along with his fellow transitional deacons next June.

‘Slow Down, Patrick’

Patrick Ernst is the fourth and youngest child of Michael and Cathy Ernst, and while they told Today’s Catholic that he is the “hardest worker” of their children, his bones apparently did not have the same fortitude – at least not early in life.

You wouldn’t know it to look at him now. He excelled in sports at Marian High School in Mishawaka, becoming the school’s first wrestler in decades to qualify for the state finals (at 220 pounds), being a captain of the football team, and was a standout rugby player. He played football at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio, where he was listed on the Polar Bears’ roster at 6-feet, 225 pounds – slight for most offensive linemen, maybe, but not for a deacon of the Church. After transferring to Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, following his freshman year, he became an All-American rugby player.

Fragile, he is not.

Asked if Patrick had suffered any major injuries during his impressive athletics career, Michael Ernst said with a smirk, “He was usually the one doing the injuring.”

That wasn’t always the case. The family’s “Slow down, Patrick!” catchphrase was well-earned.

“I broke my arm four times when I was a kid,” Ernst told Today’s Catholic.

How do you know you’ve broken your arm an excessive amount? When the family can’t agree on how many times.

“Well, you broke it two times in one fall,” his mom, Cathy, said.

“Oh, I didn’t know that,” Patrick said. “I always thought it was four times in four accidents.”

So they began going through each accident the way a schoolteacher takes roll call.

When he was 2, his older brother picked him up, dropped him, and he landed the wrong way.

“Another time, I remember I was on one end of the Lazy Boy and [my brother] Matt jumped on the other end, and I summersaulted and broke it.”

“The other time, you jumped off a bike,” Michael said. “That was three. And then the last time, you jumped over the back of the sofa and over the coffee table and came crashing down.”

“That was the third time,” Patrick said. “Because by that time, I remember it was like the scene from ‘Harry Potter’ where he has no bones during the Quidditch game, and I was so calm while my arm was totally going the wrong direction.”

Still, the consensus seems to be that he broke his arm four times.

“This is why we had to constantly tell him, ‘Slow down, Patrick!’” Cathy reiterated.

A Seed Planted

While successfully engaging in a slew of athletic pursuits, Ernst’s interests at Marian extended beyond the football field, wrestling mat, or rugby pitch.

“He loved to try everything,” Cathy said. “I remember when he was in high school, he had a rugby playoff game, but he was supposed to sing at the state choir finals on the same day, and he was really torn about it. … He was always so well-rounded, and he always worked so hard.” He ended up singing for the Marian choir and then hustling over to the rugby tournament, where he missed just one match.

At Marian, which he called “a wonderful foundation for my vocation,” Ernst also began leaning heavily into his faith.

He remembers vividly when his journey to ordination day was set in motion.

“I was serving at a Good Friday service while I was in high school, and one of my best friend’s dad, Bobby Kloska, looked at me in the sacristy while I was vesting to serve, and he sent me a message afterward – a message that I haven’t forgotten and, to this day, have memorized because it left such a deep impression on me.”

From memory, Ernst quoted Kloska’s message verbatim. “He said: ‘Patrick, the thought occurred to me that you would make an outstanding priest. Besides possessing all the necessary characteristic traits and a heart of service for others, you just seem to fit so naturally into that role on the altar.’ And then he said something that still takes my breath away. He said, ‘I’ve even thought about what it would be like to attend your first Mass and kneel down before you for a blessing. … Regardless of the future path that you take, know that I am at your service always as you continue down the road. A friend of [my son] Michael’s is a friend of mine.’”

Ernst said that message during the Triduum was the first time becoming a priest “was really put on my radar – or at least the first time I had ever thought about it seriously. I go back to that message time and again. At the time [of getting Kloska’s message], I thought I was going to do something else. I thought I was going to teach high school history and be a football coach,” he said – “and maybe a rugby player,” Cathy said.

‘The Lord’s Hand’

Pope St. John Paul II famously said, “In the designs of providence, there are no mere coincidences.” He might have cribbed the notion from Thomas Aquinas (“Nothing happens unless the Omnipotent wills it to happen”), St. Thérèse of Lisieux (“I say nothing is mere chance; everything is a grace”), and Fulton Sheen (“There are no coincidences; all things are part of a plan”) among others, but that only supports its veracity.

Along the way, the nudging message from his friend’s father wasn’t the only affirmation Ernst has received throughout his vocational journey.

He contemplated applying for seminary out of high school, but he and his parents thought it would be best to go to college. He was recruited to play football at Ohio Northern, and while it wasn’t the fit he had hoped, there continued to be signs pointing him along the path.

When packing for his freshman year, he remembers tossing in a book he had picked up during high school from the Melchizedek Project – a national group that had sprung up in the diocese for young men discerning a call to the priesthood. Bored, but also disillusioned with the community on campus, one night he picked up the book, “To Save a Thousand Souls,” and thought, “This is actually really cool. And I just thought about all the things a priest does – hearing confession, celebrating Mass – and I felt a lot of consolation in those moments. That brought me a lot of joy as I continued to think about the priesthood.”

Ernst thought about leaving Ohio Northern after his first semester, but he and his parents thought it would be best to finish out his freshman year, which he did.

After the second semester, it was clear that Ernst was ready to explore other opportunities.

“He came back after his freshman year and said: ‘I’m really unhappy. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to play football. I really want to go to Steubenville,’” Michael said.

“I remember talking to a guy from Fort Wayne who went to Steubenville,” Ernst said, “and he had a sweatshirt on that said, ‘Passionately Catholic,’ and I was like, ‘This guy’s weird,’ but he wasn’t afraid to live the faith, and I really wanted that, too. So, I told Dad, ‘Let’s go visit Steubenville.’ And he looks at me, he says, ‘Now you know, that’s prime Squatch country.’ My dad really loves Sasquatch.”

So the summer after his freshman year, father and son set off to find something that was missing in the younger Ernst’s life – and no, it wasn’t Bigfoot.

Before visiting Steubenville, Ernst met with Father Andrew Budzinski, who was vocations director for the diocese at the time, “And he told me, ‘As you go, at the forefront of your mind, just keeping thinking: gift, gift, gift – what is the gift that the Lord is trying to give you through this?’ I didn’t really know what he meant by that at the time, but when we were there, the priest during Mass said something that was so confirming in the journey that I was on. He said, ‘God is always calling us to very new and very exciting things.’ And I was looking around, and I was like, well, this is kind of new and exciting. And then he said, ‘It just takes our simple “yes” to cooperate with the grace that God is always freely bestowing upon us.’ In that moment, I really felt like the Lord was asking me to say ‘yes’ to this. I knew from that moment that I wanted to go to Steubenville.”

Ernst continued tallying up the affirmations.

“Then Dad and I ran into the chaplain for the rugby team at the admissions office,” Ernst said, letting Michael finish the story. “He looked at Patrick’s legs and said, ‘Wow! Do you play rugby?’ And Patrick was like, ‘Actually, yeah,’ and he said, ‘We really need you!’”

That priest, Franciscan Father Brian Cavanaugh, became Ernst’s spiritual director for a time.

Noting the abundance of providence along the way, Ernst acknowledged, “The Lord’s hand was certainly in it all.”

‘Be My Priest’

There is more, though. Ernst hasn’t shared the biggest tug yet – the one that made him commit to joining the seminary and pursue the priesthood.

First, though, the spark, then the flame.

Before his senior year at Steubenville, Ernst ran into Father Budzinski, who knew he was still in the discernment phase. When the two greeted each other, “he looked at me and, sort of out of the blue, said, ‘Patrick, I would accept you to seminary in a heartbeat.’ Again, things are just starting to fall into line, and I was like, ‘Wow.’ That was very meaningful. And it didn’t seem to come from him; it seemed to come from God, who was really speaking through him.”

It was during his time at Steubenville that his heart for the priesthood was set ablaze – a final confirmation from the Lord.

“My discernment really culminated when I studied abroad in Austria,” Ernst said. “I remember going to a praise and worship session in Austria in the place that we were living, and I was praying before a replica of the cross of San Damiano – that’s the cross from which Christ told St. Francis to help Him rebuild the Church – and I heard the Lord say very clearly, and the best way I can really describe it was as if the Lord was speaking directly to my heart, but I heard the Lord say, Patrick, I want you to come home and be my priest. … I think I called Mom and Dad and said, ‘Hey, I’m really thinking about doing this.’ I just knew after that moment that I really wanted to be a priest.”

The Eternal City

Ernst applied to the seminary in the fall of 2019 and was accepted in May of 2020 – the same month he was supposed to walk at graduation after earning his degree from Franciscan in history and education. The tidal wave of the COVID-19 pandemic canceled those plans, but seminary awaited regardless.

He spent his first two years in seminary at Mount St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg, Maryland, where, he said, he would have been happy to finish alongside his diocesan classmates. Bishop Rhoades evidently had other ideas.

During his first year of pre-theology, in the spring of 2021, Ernst said he was trying to get a leg up, as is his nature, and learn a little Spanish from the Duolingo app – “because I was an eager McBeaver, and I heard we needed guys who could speak Spanish,” he said. “But then, on Holy Thursday … Bishop Rhoades comes around to the tables at this dinner where all the seminarians get together and receive their assignments. And I thought I’d be funny, so I told him in Spanish, ‘Reverendísimo, quiero pagar la cuenta’ – ‘Bishop, I want to pay the check.’ Without skipping a beat, he said, ‘You should learn how to say that in Italian.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what does that mean?’ He didn’t come right out and say it, but it made me wonder if he was going to send me to Rome.”

That summer, before beginning his second year at the Mount, Father Budzinski pulled Ernst aside during Lake Week, when all the seminarians for the diocese gather for rest and camaraderie at Lake Wawasee. Father Budzinski floated a test balloon and asked Ernst how he felt about living and studying at the Pontifical North American College (or NAC, as it’s known) in Rome.

“I couldn’t really find a reason to say no, so I told him I would be open to it,” Ernst said. Later that week, Bishop Rhoades made the invitation official.

Ernst completed his second year at the Mount before leaving for the NAC, where Bishop Rhoades also studied. Ernst joined several others from the diocese who were studying in Rome, all of whom have now been ordained as priests – Father Mark Hellinger, Father Zane Langenbrunner, Father Sam Anderson, and Father Nicholas Monnin.

Despite their exceptional support, Ernst said he struggled with the change.

“That first year was very hard,” Ernst said. “Someone once told me that formation in Rome has the highest highs and the lowest lows, and in that first year, I think you experience a little bit more of the lows – homesickness, a new language, a new culture, a new seminary … a new diet with no more protein – and you just realize that, wow, I’m an ocean away, and I’m really on my own for the first time.”

In time, while the academics were challenging, Ernst adjusted – and then, to the surprise of no one, thrived.

“I would say that living in Rome and studying there has really helped me to see things from another person’s perspective, and in doing so, I hope it’s helped me to be a bit more patient as well,” Ernst said, reflectively. “You get to see how other people live the faith. … Growing up in a particular diocese, you always think Catholicism is done one way, but in Rome you get to see how someone else from another continent who is in your classes lives the same faith very differently. That’s very helpful to see for the building up of the Body of Christ. It’s helped me to widen my perspective.”

‘Called to Labor’

Inside the heart of the universal Church, the grand basilica of St. Peter’s, underneath Bernini’s famous masterwork, the Altar of the Chair, Ernst and 16 of his classmates gathered for their diaconal ordination Mass on Thursday, October 2. Like Ernst, the men come from dioceses throughout the United States to study at the Pontifical North American College.

The ordination Mass was celebrated by Bishop Joseph Hanefeldt of the Diocese of Grand Island, Nebraska, who in his homily challenged the newly ordained to recognize that they have been called by God for this moment and to use their ministries to serve His people.

“What we celebrate here today is God’s divine action in your lives – His election. Even before He created you, He knew you. He dedicated you. He appointed you. And He will be with you always throughout your ministry,” Bishop Hanefeldt said. “My sons, let this amaze you, and take it personally – God’s election, God’s choosing of you – so that your resolve to carry out the duties of diaconal ministry may always be fulfilled as a response to the Lord’s own divine initiative.”

As hundreds of family, friends, and fellow clergy listened along with the Church’s newest deacons, Bishop Hanefeldt continued: “Remember what St. John Vianney always said: ‘The priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus.’ During these months, then, of your diaconal ministry, prepare for your priestly ordination by intentionally loving those before you. … Yes, before He formed you in the womb, the Lord knew you. He dedicated you, and He appointed you, and He will always be with you in every circumstance. Now, open your heart to the grace of your diaconal ordination so that your life and ministry can be one of generous service to the Lord, who has called you to labor for the harvest of souls. Make your diaconal ministry a generous response to God’s love and mercy for you.”

‘I’m Ready to Go’

From a text from a friend’s father telling him he would make a great priest during high school to affirmation after affirmation throughout college, Ernst has actively, prudently discerned the will of God. It all led to him lying prostrate on the marble floor of the grandest church in all of Christendom – a gesture that shows his willingness to die to self and be reborn with a heart conformed to Christ the Servant.

The Mass at St. Peter’s wasn’t the culmination of Ernst’s journey, however; it was just a key stop along the way. God willing, in June, he will be ordained a priest along with his fellow deacons for the diocese – Johnathon Hickey, Noah Isch, Samuel Martinez, and Greenan Sullivan, who were ordained in May.

Acknowledging the persistent nudges along his path, Ernst said the support of those around him has been “a constant sign of God’s love for me throughout my entire time in seminary. I really see that as being reflective of God’s own faithfulness in my life.”

While Ernst acknowledges that the journey hasn’t always been smooth, he said: “But I think good discernment is like that. If you think of Sirach 2:1, it says, ‘My son, when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials.’ That’s been true sometimes, but it certainly hasn’t been without its joys as well. I find peace in knowing that if I can survive the trials and find joy even there, I think it’s a good sign. The Lord has been faithful to me in those times, and now that I’m beginning this journey and feel more grounded and solidified as a cleric, I’m ready to go; I’m ready to serve.”

In other words, there’s still no slowing him down. Thanks be to God.

Scott Warden is editor-in-chief of Today’s Catholic.