One of Ireland’s oldest clerical students, Peter Killeen, has explained his decision to pursue a vocation in his mid-sixties, Mr Killeen, who is a father of five and aged 64, is now in his second year of training in St Patrick's College, Maynooth.
He is the latest example of a growing trend in new vocations to the priesthood being drawn from men in middle age and older .
A native of Castlebar and former truck driver, factory worker and manager of the town’s CRC FM radio station, Mr Killeen said last week that he had thought about joining the priesthood when he was about twelve years of age.
But when he was 16, he met his future wife Bernadette and they got married five years later, which meant “that was the end of that” as far as a priestly vocation was concerned.
Sadly, Bernadette died of cancer in 1999, and in the years following her death Peter began to think about the priesthood again.
“I’d been thinking about it for around five years and decided to sit down with my sons and ask them what they thought about it,” he told The Western People last weekend.
“They were extremely supportive and that really spurred me on,” he disclosed.
“About a year and a half after that I mentioned it to the late Canon Paddy Curran (a local parish priest) and he was delighted”.
Mr Killeen said his mind was then “really made up at that point” and most of his friends and colleagues encouraged him to go through with his decision.
“Religion was always a major part of my life and when I told my friends that I was going to join the priesthood, most of them weren’t surprised,” he remarked.
“It just feels right. I believe that the Lord wanted me to get married and raise a family and now he wants me to be where I am today.”
He told the newspaper that having spent the first year of training for the priesthood in Vallodolid in Spain, he took to the seminary “like a duck to water” even though he had never lived anywhere else before.
“I have been out in the big bad world, I was married and had a family so the temptations out there don’t worry me,” he went on.
Though he will be 68 when he is finally ordained, and only seven years short of 75, which is the retirement age for priests, it is not a concern, he said.
“Maybe I could have moved a bit earlier and joined sooner but perhaps I wasn’t ready for it at that moment”.
“I’m ready now and intend to make the most of it.”+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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(Source: CIN)