By Rose Brennan
TOMAR, Portugal—In the last stronghold of the Knights Templar, Diocese of Bridgeport seminarians Dominick Angiolillo and Maximilian Lock received the Rite of Candidacy on July 30—a major step on their path to priestly ordination.
The Rite of Candidacy officially marks the moment a man in priestly formation makes known to the bishop—and by extension, the Church—that he is choosing to continue on a path toward the priesthood. Barring a major occurrence or event, the current expectation is that the candidates will be ordained to the priesthood in four years.
For Lock, the path to the priesthood was almost always a possibility. He grew up in a Catholic home where he attended daily Mass and priests were frequent guests.
“We had a lot of priests who were friends and would come to the house for meals or just to hang out,” he said. “So being familiar with the Church, both inside the building and outside the building, really helped me. I knew I wanted to be a priest from quite young.”
The seed of a priestly vocation was planted quite early for Angiolillo, who was an altar server at St. Theresa Parish in Trumbull. But it wasn’t until the coronavirus pandemic gripped the world that he finally took the first steps to pursuing priesthood.
“I’ve had good priest mentors over the years that kind of got me hooked on the faith,” Angiolillo said. “I just became captivated and fascinated by theology. On my heart, I knew that there was always a desire, and it just kind of took time to mature fully.”
The Rite of Candidacy approaches after the end of the spiritual year of seminary, which concludes with a 30-day silent retreat. And at the end of that retreat, Lock says a man in priestly formation has a major decision to make.
“St. Ignatius has you think about the choices you need to make in life,” Lock said. “Once you’ve chosen marriage or priesthood or religious life, the only true choice you make is the joyful fulfillment of that. But until you reach that permanent choice, you need to make a choice to follow a path that will lead you to those permanent choices.”
For the two candidates, that choice was to pursue the sacred priesthood. But Angiolillo noted people of all vocations are called to live a holy life.
“This is an avenue to holiness, which we’re all called to,” he said. “In my case, that avenue to holiness is through the priesthood.”
Angiolillo and Lock received the Rite of Candidacy in the Church of Santa Maria do Olival in Tomar, Portugal during a diocesan pilgrimage to Fatima and World Youth Day celebrations in Lisbon. For them, having the Rite of Candidacy take place in this context helped reaffirm the importance of what they were doing, as well as the role they hope to eventually play in the universal Church. Angiolillo said that responsibility was especially apparent in the message of the Fatima apparitions.
“The Blessed Mother wants us to be strong men for Christ,” he said. “For a priest (to take) candidacy in Fatima under the mantle of the Blessed Mother, she will protect our ‘yes.’”
Between having the opportunity to undertake a pilgrimage to the site of a Marian apparition, undergoing the Rite of Candidacy and participating in World Youth Day celebrations in Lisbon, it’s clear that the entire pilgrimage to Portugal will play a significant role in Angiolillo and Lock’s continuing priestly formation and—God willing—their eventual priestly ministry. And even though this pilgrimage may be especially pivotal for the candidates, Lock said any member of the faithful who undergoes a pilgrimage is an example of every Christian’s final hope.
“Any pilgrimage that we do is a little representative of every Christian’s journey to heaven,” Lock said. “The fact that World Youth Day is a communal pilgrimage taken by so many members of the universal Church really helps emphasize that fact.”
For Angiolillo, the pilgrimage has largely been about finding Christ and being formed into one of his priests. And that is an experience that he does not take lightly.
“A priest is essentially a walking Jesus Christ by virtue of their ordination,” he said. “I think that’s what being here on this pilgrimage is preparing me to be: to come to that realization and to take it very seriously. To be a persona Christi is a great honor.”
