Encounter

ENCOUNTER • JUNE 2021 • PAGE 15 to the Father. Religious order priests live in community and according to their community’s charism. Sr. Anthony Mary Diago, RSM, director of the Office of Religious Life for the Phoenix Diocese, confirmed that. A religious order priest has “a very different vocation,” she said, in that “the vocation is held by those vows of poverty, chastity and obedience where the poverty basically means that everything belongs to the community.” That means any donations a religious order priest receives go to the community. He doesn’t have his own bank account whereas a diocesan priest would. Although diocesan priests have a simple income and live simplicity, they don’t take a vow of poverty, she said. And although a diocesan priest makes a promise of obedience to his bishop as well as a promise of celibacy, it’s not the same as the vow of chastity a religious makes. “When you make a vow, you bind yourself,” Sr. Anthony Mary said. “It’s like making a holocaust of your life.” For Fr. Peter Teresa, it was about following in the way of St. Francis of Assisi. “I was very taken by his radical living of the Gospel and wanted to do something similar with my own life,” Fr. Peter Teresa said. “I felt called to live a radical poverty, a radical obedience and then also I felt a call toward communal life.” The Franciscan Friars of the Holy Spirit are based in Laveen, Arizona at the St. Kateri Tekakwitha Friary on the Gila River Indian Reservation. Currently, there are seven men in formation to become Franciscan Friars of the Holy Spirit. Dcn. John of the Cross Constantino makes eight. He’s been with the Franciscan Friars of the Holy Spirit for five years and was in the diocesan seminary for the Pittsburgh Diocese for three years before that. He said he’s very excited to serve the Church as a deacon. “When Bishop Olmsted laid his hands on my head, it just felt like something shot from my head all the way down through my body. It felt like there was a real grace being poured out,” Dcn. John of the Cross said. This summer, he’ll be studying Latin at Christendom College in Virginia for six weeks. The Franciscan Friars of the Holy Spirit regularly celebrate the Extraordinary Form of the Mass and Dcn. John of the Cross wants to learn more about the liturgy. In the fall, he’ll return to Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit for his final year of studies before ordination to the priesthood.