Ordo Praedicatorum

In a private ceremony, 11 men received the holy habit of the Order of Friars Preachers on August 8, 2008, the Solemnity of Our Holy Father Dominic.  This marks the beginning of their novitiate year at St. Gertrude Priory in Cincinnati.  From left to right:  Br. Gabriel Torretta, Br. Frederick Erdman, Br. Paul Marich, Br. John Devaney, Br. Joseph Fussner, Br. Maximilian Yergeau, Br. Benedict Joseph Freeman, Br. Sebastian White, Br. Boniface Endorf, Br. Innocent Smith, Br. Thomas More Garrett.  To learn more about each brother….

Brother Thomas More Garrett, 33

I was born in western Pennsylvania, the oldest of four children. After graduating high school, I attended Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where I received a B.S. in Public Policy Analysis. Following college, I studied law at the Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School of Law. I most recently practiced corporate law in the Philadelphia office of a large firm, where I have worked since graduating from law school, except for a period of time during which I served as an aide to a U.S. congressman.

My attraction to the Domincan life is probably best summarized in the link to this vocation website titled Charism, particularly the challenge to live in service to the sacred truth and a commitment to finding ways of conveying it into other truth such as philosophy, literature, archeology, economics and language, at the service of the Gospel, so that it may be understood and believed. My interests are more inclined toward service in some academic setting. (Br. Thomas More is a candidate for Dominican priesthood.) 

I was raised in Clinton, NJ and along with sisters Sheila and Eileen, I am the youngest of three children to John and Helen Devaney. I attended Immaculate Conception grammar school and Immaculata High School both in Somerville, NJ, and graduated with my degree in communications from Emerson College in Boston. I have been a life-long member of Immaculate Conception parish in Annandale, NJ.

As the time has passed since being accepted to this year’s novice class, also has the mystery grown of how Christ invites me to this life. That old joke often comes to mind “How do you make God laugh? Make a plan!” I am responding to this invitation at 32 years of age, 10 years after college and 15 years after beginning what I thought was my future: the music business. Primarily, I have been a radio disc jockey in New Jersey, Boston, and most recently Los Angeles as well as a concert producer.

As we all know, anything you truly love in life must entail sacrifice, so I also had a number of side jobs to help bring in income when radio and concerts were not enough. Little did I know that two things would help me hear the call. The first was becoming a diplomatic courier in Manhattan in late 2004 and the second was a bout with cancer in the fall of 2005. During my time as courier I learned the power of silence, in my car of all places, and the beauty of great access to the Sacraments, Adoration, and prayer at many churches in the city. God’s providential hand would introduce me to The Dominican Order for the first time in my life through one such church: St. Vincent Ferrer in Manhattan. It was during my recovery from cancer (now in complete remission!) that I knew Christ was asking me to “drop my net”. In what proved to be a few months of trial ahead, I ended up meeting Father Carleton Jones, O.P., in confession and after wonderful counsel felt that Our Lady wanted me to be a Dominican.  These few brief words do not do justice to God’s infinite mercy, love and patience and the support of my parents for my discernment of His Holy will in my life. However, I look forward to my life as a Dominican where I can share the mysterious glory of that mercy, love and patience with others. (Br. John is a candidate for Dominican priesthood.)

I am the oldest of three children and grew up in Fairfield, CT. After graduating from the University of Virginia with a degree in chemistry, I settled in Virginia near Washington, DC, and began working as a systems administrator in the information technology field. Raised Catholic, I nonetheless had a lengthy conversion experience my senior year of high school and first year of college which prompted me to take the faith seriously as an adult. In 2006, a pilgrimage to the tomb of Mother Teresa and to work briefly with the Missionaries of Charity prompted a deeper conversion, and God seemed to be leading me towards religious life and the Order of Preachers, where the mixture of contemplative and active life seems very appealing. Should it be His will that I become a Dominican priest, I hope to work for the salvation of souls in whatever manner God in His providence wishes. (Brother Maximilian is a candidate for Dominican priesthood.) 

Brother Boniface Endorf, 31

As a Cincinnati native I am eager to begin the novitiate at my parish, St. Gertrude, in Cincinnati. I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic schools, including St. Xavier High School. However, I fell away from the practice of the Faith. During that period I studied at the University of Cincinnati, receiving a BA in philosophy, and from there attended New York University School of Law, receiving a JD. I had no Faith in God and led a purely secular life; I had little joy during those years. I began to find the beliefs by which I lived my life suspect-they were more a rationalization for self-indulgence rather than wisdom.

I returned to Cincinnati and began to read the works of Christian authors, especially G.K. Chesterton. Their understanding of the world was quite different than mine-they saw real meaning in life and peered into truths that astounded me. Additionally, an illness in my family put directly before me the need to decide what I should believe and who I should be. I was given the grace either to accept faith in Jesus and follow the lead of those authors who so impressed me, or to reject that offer and choose the abyss of nihilism.

I returned to Jesus and came back to His Church. I struggled to lead a Christian life and to do what I had before failed to: to discern God’s plan for my life. Previously I had sought only to serve myself, but now I decided to serve Christ. As I sought to hear Christ’s wishes for me, I unexpectedly began to think of the priesthood.

After returning to Cincinnati, I started to attend St. Gertrude Parish, only then realizing that it was a Dominican Parish. The Friars there are great examples of the Christian life lived well; I felt strongly drawn to their community and mission. Later I discovered that the Dominicans also ran the campus ministry at NYU and that where I worked in New York was inside the borders of a Dominican Parish-at any point when I would have returned, the Dominicans were waiting. Now I look forward to beginning to learn and live that Dominican life. (Br. Boniface is a candidate for Dominican priesthood.)

I was raised Catholic in Southeastern Indiana on a small farm about an hour outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. There are 3 older siblings, 2 sisters and a brother, and four younger brothers. I attended Catholic schools through grade eight and then went to a public high school.

After high school, I went to Purdue University to study agricultural engineering, machine design. During college I became heavily involved at St Thomas Aquinas Center, which was the Parish / Newman Center for Purdue. During this time, I started to develop a personal faith life from the habitual faith life I had during high school.

My last year at Purdue, the Dominicans arrived at St Tom’s and I thus became acquainted with the preaching friars. I really enjoyed getting to know them and they also started bugging me with the idea of becoming a Dominican. At the time, I was very against the idea of being a priest, thinking that it would curtail my freedom and enjoyment. I knew that I should be a design engineer with a place out in the country.

After college, I started working for Ingersoll-Rand Company in various engineering jobs which brought me to Illinois, Connecticut, Colorado, and California before finally moving me back near home at Cincinnati, Ohio. Each engineering position I held left me feeling unfulfilled with life and desiring something more. It was not until I exhausted all the jobs I thought would give me happiness in life that I finally accepted the priestly calling that had been around in my life since college.

After finally accepting the invitation to look at the priesthood, the Dominicans where one of the first groups that I wanted to look into for my vocation. I was attracted to the community life and the balance they had between contemplation, prayer, study, and preaching. When visiting the House of Studies in Washington, DC, for the first time, I remember feeling really at home and that I could study and live at that place.

Now that I have been accepted for the novitiate, I am excited about making a further commitment to give my life to the Lord as a Dominican Friar. I look forward to saying Mass, hearing confessions, and preaching to those around me. I have a particular interest in parish, college, or retreat ministry. Some of my other interests are skiing, reading, photography, cooking, farming, and outdoor activities. (Br. Joseph is a candidate for Dominican priesthood.)

I was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to a Swedish father and an American mother. My family, including my two younger brothers, came to America when I was six years old. Since then, I have moved around fairly regularly, first as a result of my father’s job and later to pursue my studies. I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from University College London in 1999, and I earned a Master’s from the University of Cambridge in 2002. During the last fours years, I have pursued doctoral work in political philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Though baptized in the Lutheran Church, I did not for most of my childhood think much about religion. During the course of my higher studies, I received the grace that led me to seek full communion with the Catholic Church. Since then, I have found great joy in participating in various aspects of the life of Catholic Boston. My involvement includes the satisfaction of weekly serving the sick at a local Catholic hospital.

As for how God called me to the Dominican order, it is difficult to pinpoint just one event or experience. Things happened gradually. My visits to the House of Studies in Washington, DC, were occasions of grace. I also benefited from the good counsel of several Dominican priests, and from my reading about St. Dominic and the role of the Order in the life of the Church. But most of all, I suppose, I came to know my vocation while at prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, and by asking the intercession of the saints, especially St. Joseph and St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

I look forward to embracing the Dominican life, to devoting time to study, to praying the liturgy, to learning to preach the Word of God, and to living the communal life. And finally, I look forward to the day when these activities in God’s providence prepare me to receive the priesthood of Jesus Christ. (Br. Benedict Joseph is a candidate for Dominican priesthood.)

I was born on February 28, 1981, was baptized shortly thereafter, but within a year my parents, who were Catholics earnestly trying live out their faith, decided to leave the Catholic Church for a charismatic wing of Protestantism, sincerely believing that they were moving toward a fuller and more authentic practice of Christianity.

After high school I chose to study economics at Gordon College, a small, non-denominational (but essentially Evangelical) college located on the north shore of Boston. While at Gordon I visited several different churches, eager to live the Christian faith in a way that was not simply what I had grown up with. I was invited by a professor one Sunday to tag along to an Anglican church in Boston. I was awe-struck by the beauty, the majesty, indeed the formality and structure of the liturgy, which was labeled Anglo-Catholic. I began reading voraciously about the liturgy, the early Church, and eventually…books by people who had done the inconceivable: actually converted to Catholicism. One such author was Dr. Thomas Howard, a former Gordon professor, and a man who, providentially, became a good friend and mentor. Through God’s grace I was brought back to the Catholic Church, being formally received at the Easter Vigil of 2004, just one year after graduating from Gordon. (Incidentally, my parents have also returned to the Catholic Church.)

Desiring to further my knowledge of Catholicism, I chose to study theology for two years at a small graduate institute housed in a 14th century monastery in Gaming, Austria, called The International Theological Institute, which brings together Western- and Eastern-rite Catholics, and which was founded by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. After graduating from the ITI in 2006, I was hired to work as a Residence Director for Franciscan University of Steubenville’s “abroad” program, also located in Gaming. It was while in Austria, after much time spent with the Dominican community in Vienna, that I discovered a Dominican vocation. Some people are able to pinpoint the day and the hour at which, through some special movement in their soul, they were given a near-certain knowledge of a religious or priestly vocation. Knowledge of my vocation came gradually, through the “suavity” of Divine Providence, in the words of one Dominican author.

I’m grateful for having had opportunities while in Europe to visit many important places in the history of the Dominican order, but I’m eager to be a son of St. Dominic in the Province of St. Joseph. (Br. Sebastian is a candidate for Dominican priesthood.)

I was born the youngest of four children in Spokane, Washington, where I remained until leaving for college at the age of eighteen. Growing up in this beautiful but economically and spiritually troubled Pacific Northwest city instilled in me a deep love for the outdoors, natural beauty, and simple living, but it also made me aware of the real consequences of spiritual poverty and despair on individuals and society at large.

When I was fourteen, my family and I left the Presbyterian church in which I had been raised and began searching for a new church or denomination to join, a process that forced me to admit how little I actually knew about my faith and awakened in my heart a desire for an unknown Truth. After about a year and a half of searching, God opened my heart to the Catholic Church, and I was confirmed the next Easter at the age of sixteen.

I was pleased to have found a spiritual home, but invested little care into my faith in the coming years beyond attending Mass on (most) Sundays. After graduating from high school I attended Arizona State University and majored in Japanese with a minor in History, the former being primarily an excuse to study abroad in Japan, which I did my junior year. I first met the Dominican Order through the campus ministers at ASU, but my own half-hearted interest in my faith prevented that meeting from developing into anything substantial.

Upon graduating, I decided to pursue my interest in Japanese literature at the graduate level, entering the Pre-modern Japanese literature PhD program at Columbia University in the Fall of 2005. Before moving to New York I had resolved to make Catholicism a major part of my life, and through the inspired preaching of Fr. Jacek Buda, OP, and Fr. Andrew Fornal, OP, the Polish Dominicans who oversaw the campus ministry and the adjoining parish at the time, I was blessed with a profound spiritual flourishing of the sort I had never known. A retreat preached by Fr. Jacek first opened my eyes to the possibility of the priestly life. About a year later I decided that God was clearly calling me to both the priesthood and the Dominican Order, and I began applying to the Province of St. Joseph.

God willing, I hope to serve Him as a campus minister, preaching to the young about the redemption of the intellectual life and the radical freedom of life in Christ. (Br. Gabriel is a candidate for Dominican priesthood.)

I was born in Lexington, MA, and I am the second of four children. I have an older brother, and a younger sister and brother. I was raised Presbyterian, but in boarding school I began my journey to the Catholic Church. Then I attended St. John’s College, in Annapolis, and studied the great books program there. St. John’s uses the Socratic method to explore the original texts of the great thinkers, and it was there that my interest in philosophy and theology began.

As a sophomore, I converted to Catholicism. In a sense, I read my way to the sacramental understanding of Church, but my conversion was due in large part to the Rosary and the intercession of Our Lady. Eventually my discernment lead me to the Dominicans. I was drawn by the communal prayer of the Divine Office, and the emphasis on study as a means to holiness, and for the sake of solid preaching and teaching. After graduation, I moved to Greenville, SC, worked night shift at a factory, further discerned, and finally applied to the novitiate. I have a debt of gratitude to many for their prayers and counsel.

I rowed on the crew team in college, taught water skiing at summer camps, and enjoy hiking and biking. My favorite authors are Fyodor Dostoevsky and Joseph Conrad. I look forward to deepening my understanding of philosophy and theology, and my hope is to teach and serve in a parish. (Br. Frederick is a candidate for Dominican priesthood.)

I was born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio, the younger of two children, and I was baptized as an infant in the Catholic faith. However, I grew up in a home that was religiously mixed - my mother is a Catholic and my father is a former Catholic, turned Evangelical Protestant. As a child, I began attending Protestant services with my father, and was told that the Catholic Church taught nothing but lies. However, as I entered high school, I began to explore the Faith and the Scriptures for myself, and was convinced of the truth of the Catholic Faith and its mission as the Church founded by Christ on the Rock of Peter. I was confirmed and made my First Holy Communion at age fifteen, and I knew that God had a place for me in the Church to share and to defend the truths of the faith.

Not longer afterward, I began discerning a vocation to the priesthood, which had times of uncertainty. I even spent a year in college seminary studying for my diocese. However, I was still not certain of my vocation, and I decided to transfer to Franciscan University of Steubenville, where I graduated this past May with my bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy, with minors in history and theology. My time in Steubenville was blessed, as I was encouraged by the faith of others and lived in an environment centered on Christ in the Eucharist and firmly based on his Church.

Meanwhile, during my senior year of high school and my year in college seminary, I began attending Mass at St. Dominic Church in Youngstown, a parish of the Province of St. Joseph. I didn’t know much about the Dominican Order, but I began to know the friars in the parish and to see that there was another path in which I could pursue my priestly vocation other than the diocesan life. When I transferred to Steubenville, I also joined St. Dominic’s, and would return on breaks to assist the friars in serving or reading at Mass. As I began to express more interest in the Dominicans, the friars at St. Dominic’s became a tremendous support and blessing to me, exposing me to the Order and holding me in prayer as I discerned and eventually applied for the novitiate.

I look forward to the novitiate year and growing in the pursuit of my vocation. I have a great desire to work in a parish as a Dominican priest, working with the people of God on a daily basis and administering the sacraments. My love for the Faith has also instilled a desire in me to possibly teach some day, leading others to search and to find the truth in Christ as I did in my own conversion. (Br. Paul is a candidate for Dominican priesthood.)

I was born in Oakland, California and was christened Philip Carl in honor of the two great sixteenth century saints. At a young age my family moved to River Forest, IL, and later to South Bend, IN. My father is an architect and professor at Notre Dame, and my mother is a wonderful homemaker and assistant at my father’s firm. I have four brothers and one sister who live in New York, California, and Pennsylvania.

For high school I attended St. Gregory’s Academy, a small all-male boarding school in North Eastern Pennsylvania, where I received an excellent liturgical, spiritual, and academic formation, and developed a love of music, literature, and philosophy. I pursued these interests to the University of Notre Dame, where I have read in music history & theory and philosophy. In music I have focused on sacred music and tonal theory, and have written a bachelor’s thesis on the hymn repertoire of the Dominican liturgy. My philosophical studies have focused on Plato, St. Thomas, moral philosophy, and philosophy & literature. I have spent several summers traveling and studying in Europe, and have a great love for France, Ireland, England, and Italy.

In my leisure time I enjoy playing Irish traditional music on the wooden concert flute, reading literature, philosophy, and theology, writing essays, and hiking and running. At Notre Dame I have been involved with the Orestes Brownson Council (founded by a student who went on to become a friar of the St. Joseph province), the South Bend Distributist Solidarity, the Notre Dame Gregorian Schola, and have edited a literary periodical called The Catholic Idler.

I first became interested in the Dominicans by reading A.D. Sertillanges’ The Intellectual Life. I then got to know several friars who study or work at Notre Dame, who have been splendid models and mentors for me. In the year since declaring aspirancy I have had the great fortune to meet a number of friars from the Province of St. Joseph and other provinces who have been tremendously encouraging. I look forward to being formed in the spirit and traditions of the Order of Preachers and devoting my life to prayer and study directed towards preaching and teaching. (Philip is a candidate for Dominican priesthood.)

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