Born in 1961, I grew up in a devout Catholic family where love for the Blessed Virgin Mary was at the heart of daily life. My relationship with Our Lady began early—deepening, especially after my First Holy Communion, when I felt her maternal love bring an extraordinary peace to my heart, which was embattled with anxiety, panic attacks, and depression. Through this love and peace that the Blessed Mother imparted to me, I sensed a call to the priesthood.
Prayer became my refuge, and through a devoted practice of the Catholic Faith, I found the strength to manage my emotional struggles. At the age of fifteen, in 1976, I entered high school seminary, but what I had hoped would be a sacred formation turned into a time of deep spiritual desolation. Wounded by the experience, I walked away from the Church in anger and confusion.
For years afterward, I drifted into a worldly life, chasing money, power, and pleasure. I married and divorced three times and was blessed with four children. In addition to enduring the painful consequences of separation and divorce, I suffered the tragic loss of my first wife and one of my sons. Still, amid every heartbreak and failure, the Blessed Mother never abandoned me. She came to me in my worst moments of anxiety and despair, surrounding me with peace when the world offered none.
Then, on January 2, 2002, when I was forty—exactly one year to the day after my father’s death—I experienced what I have long described as a “St. Paul conversion”: a sudden, life-altering encounter with Divine Mercy that pierced my soul. Years later, through the work of Christine Watkins, I recognized that what had happened to me was in fact an illumination of conscience—a direct grace from God that laid my entire life bare before God’s Love and Truth.
That moment changed everything. Through tears and repentance, I returned home—to the beautiful Bride of Christ: the Catholic Church, to the sacraments, and to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. After a brutally painful annulment process, and many refusals by the Church, I was ordained as a single man to the Permanent Diaconate on February 9, 2009. As a deacon, I served as Director of Mission and Spiritual Care for a Catholic hospital system in Northern Michigan, ministering to the sick and the dying.
In the spring of 2010, while on pilgrimage to Medjugorje, I heard an unmistakable inner locution from the Blessed Mother, who had nurtured, guided, and protected me my entire life. She was calling me to the priesthood.
At first, my call was met with resistance. Several bishops and vocation directors doubted the authenticity of such a calling, given my past poor choices in life. “Who could blame them,” I thought. But Mary’s call was unwavering. Through my perseverance and her constant intercession, her plan unfolded. On September 14, 2017, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, I was ordained a Catholic priest at age fifty-five.
My first assignment led me directly into spiritual warfare: I encountered cultic activity, satanic worship, and witchcraft within my parish boundaries, and I was terrified. I begged my bishop for reassignment, wanting nothing to do with the manifestations of evil that I was experiencing. In a moment of silent Eucharistic Adoration, however, the Blessed Mother spoke to me again through an inner locution, telling me that I had nothing to fear and that she was preparing my priesthood for the ministry of Deliverance and Healing. Her voice brought immediate peace. My fear vanished.
I became a pastor and after several years of training, I was formally mandated by my bishop to become the exorcist for my diocese. Through this ministry, I am simply a vehicle with the privilege to witness souls being freed by the triumph of the Cross, the maternal power of Mary, and the intercession of St. Joseph, Destroyer of Demons.
Today, I continue to shepherd souls as a pastor and exorcist, and in 2025, I celebrated my eighth anniversary as a priest—a testimony not to human strength, but to divine mercy and the faithfulness of the Virgin Mary. Though unworthy, I was called by the Blessed Mother in perfect love—to serve her Son, to defend the Church, and to lead souls to salvation. Fiat!
