Archbishop Thomas Wenski lays hands on Deacon Paul Pierce, ordaining him as one of eight new priests for the Archdiocese of Miami, May 8, 2021, at St. Thomas University’s Fernandez Family Center. (Photo courtesy of the Florida Catholic Miami)
Local boy is ordained a priest for the Neocatechumenal Way in Florida
By Anna Weaver
Hawaii Catholic Herald
On May 8, at a liturgy more than 4,700 miles away from where he grew up, Father Paul Pierce became a Catholic priest for the Archdiocese of Miami. This vocation would have surprised his younger self, Father Pierce says, especially considering he didn’t become a Catholic until he was 19.
Born and raised on Maui, Jesse Adam “Paul” Pierce was not brought up in any particular religion. Pierce’s mainland-raised parents had moved to Maui to be closer to his grandmother. He was an only child and his parents ended up divorcing when he was 4.
Deacon Pierce listens to Archbishop Wenski’s homily. (Photo courtesy of the Florida Catholic Miami)
Pierce first grew to know Catholicism through the local Neocatechumenal Way community at St. Joseph Parish in Makawao. His mother had explored various beliefs over the years and learned about The Way through her yoga teacher. After she was baptized, she brought the now-teenaged Pierce to the community’s meetings.
“I wanted him to have better than what our family had – chaos and suffering,” his mother Rachel Hope Pierce told the Florida Catholic Miami in a May 12 story.
The roots of the Neocatechumenal Way began in Madrid in 1964 when two laypeople started a religious program to re-catechize inactive Catholics. Today it is a worldwide movement made up of small communities of up to 50 people. There are an estimated million or so members and 125 seminaries, according to The Way’s official website.
For years Pierce attended the community’s gatherings and liturgies but was never pressured to become Catholic. Only when he wanted to go on a mission through the Neocatechumenal Way did his local Maui leader suggest baptism to him.
He received his sacraments of initiation into the Catholic Church in 2010 when he was 19 and adopted his confirmation name, Paul, as the new first name he goes by. Pierce eventually went on missions to New Mexico before entering the seminary, and Minnesota and North Dakota as part of his seminarian formation.
Pierce also attended World Youth Days in Cologne, Sydney, Madrid and Panama, and says those were key to his spiritual formation.
It was at the end of World Youth Day in Madrid that he attended a Neocatechumenal Way vocational meeting with other young members of The Way. As the leaders of The Way asked those in attendance to consider a call to the priesthood or religious life, Pierce said he knew as sure as anything that God was calling him to be a priest.
Knew with certainty
His life until that point had been fairly aimless. He surfed and hiked, spent too much time playing video games and studied liberal arts at Maui Community College. In the back of his mind he thought he might marry, have a family and live a comfortable existence.
But at that meeting in Madrid he knew with certainty that he was being called to enter the seminary.
“I had this conviction … that I would be happier doing the will of God,” Pierce said. “It was just a certainty like you knew something was the truth.”
After publicly declaring his intention to pursue a priestly vocation, he went to an aspiring seminarians retreat in Porto San Giorgio, Italy, where he and 300 other men were assigned by lottery to various Redemptoris Mater seminaries. Pierce was chosen to go to the newly formed seminary in Miami, which opened in December 2011 at St. Cecilia Church in Hialeah, a largely Cuban American community in the Miami area.
St. Cecilia had closed in 2009 due to financial issues, and the rectories were abandoned. Pierce and 11 other seminarians, most of whom had started their studies at other Redemptoris Mater seminaries in the U.S., spent a lot of time doing manual labor like carpentry, electrical work and drywall to create a livable seminary out of the rundown rectories.
He and another seminarian lived with an older Nicaraguan couple, who were part of The Way’s community in Hialeah, before the seminary buildings were livable.
“It has been an excellent experience for me because it’s not pray and study, but also work,” he said.
While that’s not for everyone, for him it was perfect.
“It was a big blessing. I don’t know if I would have stayed in the seminary if it was kind of a more established structure because I really needed this intense experience.”
Rachel Hope Pierce watches with emotion the ordination of her son. (Photo courtesy of the Florida Catholic Miami)
He also went from speaking little Spanish to being fluent in it while studying and working in the Hialeah area. While he and his fellow seminarians lived simply, Pierce couldn’t have been happier with the “fruits of formation.”
“The seminary has been a place that I’ve been able to find God … and it’s pushed me to have a relationship with Jesus Christ,” he said.
Miami’s Archbishop Thomas Wenski ordained Pierce, 31, and seven others to the priesthood on May 8 at Fernandez Family Center at St. Thomas University in front of 800 people, including Pierce’s mother and half-sister, who is 12 years younger.
He was able to travel back to Maui after his ordination for a few weeks of visiting with his original The Way community, to say Masses of Thanksgiving as a new priest, and to visit his father and grandmother who still live on Maui.
His father, Glenn, is an agnostic and has said that sometimes he wishes he could have grandchildren since Paul is his only child. But he has also been very supportive, Pierce said.
God’s plans are greater
“To see someone not raised Catholic, ask for baptism, later do missionary work, and later become a priest is a beautiful sign of how God’s plan is so much greater than our own plans,” said his longtime friend from Maui Jonathan Stenger. “Paul’s experience is an example of what can happen if we allow God to lead us.”
With their May ordination, Pierce and another Redemptoris Mater seminarian from Paraguay became the first two seminarians to go through their entire priestly formation at the Miami Redemptoris Mater seminary.
Redemptoris Mater seminarians complete their studies through their diocesan-affiliated seminaries and are ordained for the diocese in which they serve. After some years of priestly ministry, the local bishop can send them on mission.
Father Pierce’s first assignment as a priest is as parochial vicar at St. Hugh Parish in Coconut Grove on the Florida coast near Coral Gables. St. Hugh is a wealthier parish in contrast to the more working-class neighborhoods he’s served in before.
But although he’s been ordained, he and other Neocatechumenal Way priests continue to receive weekly formation at the local seminary. Father Pierce said that it’s funny in a way that once a priest is ordained, people think you’ve reached the end of your studies when in fact he says, “you learn little by little as you go along.”
He hopes to be sent on mission in the future, but that is up to the will of God and Miami’s archbishop.
Father Pierce says he knows of one other priest affiliated with the Neocatechumenal Way who is from Hawaii. Father Michael Jucutan is currently serving in the Archdiocese of Agana in Guam. And another St. Joseph, Makawao, community member, Keone Hurdle, is studying at the Redemptoris Mater seminary in Newark, New Jersey, and should be ordained in about two years.
As a new priest, Pierce said people have been congratulating him for giving so much up, but he doesn’t feel that way.
“I feel like this vocation to the priesthood is giving me everything, all these blessings,” he said. “It gives me a chance every day to devote myself to love people, to love God, and I really don’t take it for granted.”
“To be able to participate in the mission of Christ to save souls, there’s nothing better.”
