Canada’s first deaf Catholic priest will celebrate mass on occasion using sign language and will hear confessions face to face.Ordained Friday night at St. Joseph’s Basilica, Matthew Hysell will minister to Catholics with hearing impairments, while also serving as a parish priest at St. Thomas Church in Mill Woods.
“It is with some trepidation that I find myself in this position,” Hysell said at a news conference at the office of the Archdiocese of Edmonton only hours before taking his final vows. “Honestly, I think this is more about the church than it is about individual achievement. It is a signal of the solidarity the church feels for people who live in a world of silence.”
Eighteen months old when he contracted meningitis, Hysell lost his hearing totally in one ear and can hear only a tiny bit with an aid in the other.
But he is an expert at reading lips and speaks so clearly that he delivers sermons without hesitation. Some of that he learned taking speech classes, some from sitting beside his mother and reciting random words from a dictionary when he was a kid.
“She didn’t want me to be deprived of being able to communicate,” Hysell, 35, said.
Born and raised in a Baptist family in Michigan, Hysell decided he wanted to become a priest at age 13, when he read about them at school.
“I was struck by how a priest gives of himself to other people,” Hysell said. “I couldn’t put it in words, but it felt like something I should do with my life.”
He converted to Catholicism in 1993 at age 16, and in 1999 entered a seminary program in New York established by the late John Cardinal O’Connor and Father Tom Coughlin, the first deaf Catholic priest in the U.S.
After obtaining an undergraduate degree in philosophy at the City University in New York, Hysell got a master’s in theology through a program Coughlin started in California, and was then invited to Edmonton by the Sisters of Providence in 2006 to give presentations on spiritual topics at St, Mark’s Catholic Community for the deaf.
Two years later, he decided to move here to study at the Newman Theological College and decided to pursue becoming a priest with inspiration from Archbishop Richard Smith, who uses sign language when he celebrates mass at St. Mark’s.
“There are a number of things you can say about Matthew,” Smith said, seated at Hysell’s side during the news conference. “He connects well with people, and not just those who are deaf. Parishioners have come to me and said, ‘Who is that?’ He really touches their hearts.”
Coughlin, now one of 10 deaf priests in the U.S., flew to Edmonton from San Antonio to attend his ordination, as did Father Paul Zirimenya, a deaf priest from San Francisco.
“I have seen him grow in many ways, and he has worked very hard to get to where he is,” Coughlin said.
“At this point I can say, ‘Matthew, good job.’ ”
Although he is assigned to St. Theresa’s, Hysell will also work with congregants at St. Mark’s, where has been lending assistance as a transitional deacon.
“I want deaf people to know the church cares for them, not only for their spiritual life, but for their temporal life as well,” said Hysell, who will say mass for them using sign language.
“I want them to know they don’t have to settle in life, and that it can be worthwhile.”
Canada’s first deaf priest and one of only 16 worldwide, Hysell hopes others will follow.
There are nearely 130,000 deaf Catholics in Canada, and about 50 at St. Mark’s.
“My next hope is to see someone who was born deaf become a priest in Canada,” he said. “There is a hierarchy when it comes to this. They would outrank me.”