PHOTOS: Click here to go to a photo gallery from our student community. 

Priests, brothers, SCJ students and candidates living and praying together in community…

The Dehon Formation House in Chicago is home to an international, intergenerational community of professed SCJs and those discerning religious life with the congregation. The community not only houses the initial formation programs (candidacy, novitiate, philosophy and theology) of the province but also welcomes SCJs from around the world on sabbatical or in graduate programs. The 2014-15 academic year includes Fr. Andrzej Sudol, a Polish SCJ missionary who has served for many years in the Philippines and India, and Fr. Antonny Wijaya, SCJ, from the Indonesian Province. Fr. Andrzej is in a sabbatical program and Fr. Antonny is doing graduate studies at Loyola University in Chicago.

In their own words, members of the community introduce themselves:

Initial formation

Frater Justin Krenke, SCJ

My name is Justin Krenke and after three years as a candidate I am now a novice. I am 24 years old and was born in West Allis, Wis., but grew up in Milwaukee. I lived with my mom, stepdad, and two older sisters.

I learned about the Priests of the Sacred Heart from a vocational website that matched people with religious communities based on their interests. After I visited the community on a Come and See weekend I became very interested and decided that this is the community for me.

During breaks from school I have worked in SCJ ministries. Through these experiences I learned that ministry isn’t just about going and helping people and then when you’re done, moving on the next project. Ministry is about making connections with people, talking with them, and learning about and from them. It’s about showing people that you truly do care about their situation and you want to be able to help as much as you can, even if it’s just listening.

I am now in my senior year at Xavier University finishing up my undergraduate studies. I am looking forward to finishing up at Xavier and moving on to my theological studies at Catholic Theological Union.

Frater James Nguyen, SCJ

I am James Nguyen, 25.  I was born in Saigon, Vietnam, but raised in Seattle, home of the Super Bowl XLVIII Champions, since I was four.  I am the middle of three boys, the oldest of whom is a Jesuit.  I am a graduate from the University of Washington (Go Huskies!) with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and sociology.

I am in my third year of theological studies at Catholic Theological Union as well as beginning a second master’s degree in Pastoral Counseling at Loyola University.  I have been invited for a  second year to help teach the adult confirmation program at Our Lady of the Snows Parish and I continue with my ministry with the Vietnamese Eucharistic Youth Society at St. Henry’s Parish.

During my spare time I enjoy exploring the outdoors on hiking, camping and backpacking trips.  I love to travel and my dream is to do a backpacking trip across the Himalayas.

What drew me to the Priests of the Sacred Heart is the charism and spirituality found in Fr. Leo Dehon’s writings.  Fr. Dehon always found comfort in the knowledge that God loves him tremendously, which is symbolized in the burning Heart of Christ.  Fr. Dehon wants those of us who are dedicated to the love of God to be living examples of the love that Jesus had.  I strive to live in that spirit of our founder daily through my religious vows: “In poverty, I desire to give all I have.  In chastity, I desire to give all I am.  And in obedience, I desire to give all I will become.”

Liem Nguyen (candidate)

My name is Liem Nguyen.  I am from sunny California, Orange County.  I’ve lived there since emigrating to the United States from Vietnam.  I was born in 1982.  My parents, Dinh and Hai, live in California, along with my five brothers and two sisters.  I am one of the youngest in my family. Before entering candidacy I was a machine lathe operator for several years.

I have always felt an attraction to ministry and serving God’s people as a priest, and have been involved in my parish.  I finally decided to explore my call because of the example of my local pastor and Fr. Francis Vu Tran, SCJ, whom I met through the national Vietnamese youth group, in which I ministered as a catechist.

I am in my second year as a student at the English Language Academy of de Paul University.  I am deepening my grasp of English, and learning and working a lot. My goal is to attend Xavier University and earn my philosophy degree.  When I am not studying, I enjoy listening to music.  Instrumental and classical music are my favorites.  I also enjoy movies, all kinds, but Pixar is my favorite studio. Music and film are a welcome change of pace right now when I want to take a break from my studies!

A treat for me this summer was to return to Vietnam to visit family. But, it is good now to be back in the formation house.

Frater Juan Carlos Castañeda Rojas, SCJ

“You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ll never be hurt,
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth.”
― William W. Purkey

I am Juan Carlos Castañeda Rojas, 32 years old and from the city of everlasting spring: Medellin, Colombia. I love horses, cooking, and spending time with my family and friends. Since I was a kid I felt that I was called to the religious life.

But I never thought that it was going to be a long distance call!

In January, 2006, I responded to God´s call by coming to the United States to start my discernment process about my vocation with the Priests of the Sacred Heart. I professed my first vows and became a member in August, 2013.

My experience here has been amazing. I felt welcome right away. Learning a new language was not easy, but thanks to all the support that I received in the ESL program at Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology I was able to do it. After that, I moved to the formation house in Chicago to continue with my spiritual and academic formation. Here I found people like me who responded to God´s call; here I found friends, but more than that, I found a home and a family. I graduated from Saint Xavier University and now I am in my second year of theology at Catholic Theological Union.

Living in another culture, with people with different personalities and backgrounds, is not always easy. But it is that which has helped me to grow in my spirituality as a Dehonian. Community life, prayer, school and even fun times are the things that make this experience an amazing journey. I am happy to be part of this great family.

I am proud to be a Dehonian.

Patrick Skahill (candidate)

My name is Patrick Skahill and I was born on March 17, 1970, in Los Angeles, Calif. I’m the sixth child of nine, and I spent my first 18 years in L.A. before joining the U.S. military. Over the past 12 years I lived in Las Vegas, working primarily as truck driver.

It was in Las Vegas that I heard and answered the call of Christ and his church to serve. I entered candidacy on August 22, 2014, the feast of the Queenship of Mary. It’s only been a couple of months since I joined the formation community here in Chicago, so my discernment has just begun. It was difficult leaving everything behind as I am sure it is for most candidates. However, I’m very pleased and happy I made the move. I have met many interesting people so far who have shown nothing but hospitality, kindness, and patience. Praise be to God.

Currently, I am attending Xavier University to finish my bachelor’s degree and then on to CTU, if it’s God’s will. I enjoy reading, exercise, and a good hearty conversation.

Frater Joseph Vu, SCJ

Frater Joseph is in formation, but not in residence at the formation house. Instead, he is doing a ministerial assignment in Houston. Before professing final vows, each student must do at least one year in full-time ministry. 

Chicago is my hometown but I  made the move down south! I am currently in my apostolic ministry assignment at Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in Houston, Texas. It is a time for me to experience what is like to live and work at an SCJ parish.

My ministry here at OLG mainly involves working at the school that is attached to the parish. I tutor students from grades 2 to 4 who are struggling and need extra attention in regards to their schoolwork. I also help the teachers with their classes and various afterschool activities.

My other ministry at OLG includes helping in faith formation with our high school classes and junior high classes. I have had experience in faith formation before, but a new environment and new people brings about new challenges. I really do enjoy spending time with the youth and helping them on their faith journey.

I am currently in my fifth year of temporary vows. I met the SCJs through my youth group. My vows continually remind me of my dedication to live my life’s intent on being united with the Heart of Christ and to be in community with my brothers.

I am really enjoying my time here at Our Lady of Guadalupe. The workload is considerably more than when I was in school studying, but I love the ministry. The people here are very friendly and care a great deal about the life of the parish. It is really inspiring for me.

Formation team and others in community

Br. Duane Lemke, SCJ, director of the formation program

Seventeen years. Well, it isn’t a landmark like 25 or certainly 50. Yet, that is the number of years that I have been a brother with the Priests of the Sacred Heart, and this year the anniversary struck me as more significant than the more traditional milestones. Perhaps it is precisely because “17” is not one of the traditional milestones. It is ordinary, easily unnoticed, and yet represents a significant amount of time dedicated to this wonderful, ordinary, extra-ordinary, and blessed vocation that is religious life.

My journey with the Priests of the Sacred Heart actually began at birth (though I did not join their formation program until I was 24). The SCJs served my home parish on the prairies of South Dakota, and ministered to my family for decades. One of them, Fr. Joe Ford, witnessed the marriage of my parents and later baptized me, one month after my birth, in 1972. In 1971, he also witnessed the marriage of my parents.

My childhood was spent in South Dakota, on a farm with my parents and two siblings (a brother and a sister). During these years I got to know other SCJs with names like Doug, Frank (two Franks), John, Steve (two Steves), Leonard, and Tom. Like the number 17, these names are pretty ordinary. However, from them I saw a life of serving the needs of others: visiting their homes, being with them during the celebrations and rough times of life. Their witnessing of the Gospel was pretty extraordinary. After high school, I continued to keep connections with the SCJs by doing something pretty ordinary: mowing grass for them during the summer.

During my college years, to be honest, I got pretty caught up in the normal but self-focused day-to-day life of a college student. This was at the University of Mary in Bismarck, ND, where I earned a BS and a BA degree. However, as the date of graduation came closer and closer, I realized that college does indeed end, and then what? My thoughts naturally turned to those ordinary men who served my home parish and the extraordinary life they led.

Seventeen years is difficult to summarize. It can be amazing that ordinary life can bring so many extraordinary things one’s way. As an SCJ I’ve been privileged to get to know Native Americans and the surrounding communities near Chamberlain, SD. I’ve been a director of Religious Education, and even a computer teacher in a grade school. I lived in Milwaukee for a short time, and in Chicago for a number of years. I’ve gotten to know people from every continent, and most places in the United States. Of course, religious life is not about the travel. But, for me it has been, in part, about getting to know people from as many backgrounds as there are in the world. I can’t help but think that the Sacred Heart is like that: never merely sightseeing, but always reaching out, exploring, getting to know the other.

So today my ordinary life is that of a formation director in Chicago, Ill. Ordinary. Hah! I’ve gotten to know –– this year alone –– a group of men who, in all, speak five different first languages, and grew up on four of the five continents. In Chicago I’ve gotten to live with men from California, Chicago, Colombia, Mexico, Nevada, Puerto Rico, and Vietnam. Like my name, you would probably not recognize theirs or see them in national headlines. We are ordinary men, drawn extraordinarily together by the Sacred Heart for a life of service to the gospel.

I wonder what the coming years are going to bring. What will my life look like at, say, the ordinary milestone of my 24th anniversary, or my 33rd? I have no way of knowing. But, if those years are anything like the first 17 God’s love will lead me to live in places I can’t even imagine now, and to count people as part of my everyday life who are anything but ordinary.

Fr. Bob Bossie, SCJ

I was born in Boston, Mass., and raised with six siblings. Within two weeks of graduating from high school I joined the U.S. Air Force. During the following four years, I maintained nuclear weapons carrying aircraft, among other things.

A few years after the Air Force, while traveling the country as a contract worker in the military industry, I had a life-changing experience of God. At that moment, it became crystal clear that I was of God, as was everyone and everything else. Now I knew that everyone and everything was holy and worthy of reverence.

In seeking a lifestyle that would enhance that experience, I joined the Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Shortly thereafter, I was amazed to find that my desire to fully give of myself was completely consistent with the spirituality of the Priests of the Sacred Heart –– I come to do you will, Oh God.

For over 30 years I ministered at the 8th Day Center for Justice, a Catholic, faith-based NGO working for social change. During these years, I let go of many of the presuppositions with which I was raised. Again, I find this to be fully consistent with the spirituality of the Priests of the Sacred Heart: to establish the reign of the Heart of Jesus in souls and societies.

I retired from full-time active ministry in 2012 but continue to be involved to a lesser extent in justice and peace activities. Community life continues to be good.

For all this I give God thanks.

Fr. John Czyzynski, SCJ

My name is Fr. John Czyzynski and that in itself is a story.  The U.S. government knows me as Richard.  My family and Cleveland friends call me Mike (my middle name). John is my “religious” name (we used to take a new name, but now we emphasize religious vows as an intensification of our baptism so guys use their baptismal names. Actually my full religious name is John Bosco Maria.).

I took John Bosco as my patron when I became a novice.  I remember our novice director telling me:  “If you are half the priest he was, you’ll be all right.”

I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and that city, which was named “the most miserable city to live in the United States” is precious to me.  After grade school I left home to pursue my vocation with the Priests of the Sacred Heart. We had our own seminary system and I am grateful for the formation and education I received at our high school seminary in Donaldson, Ind., novitiate in Ste. Marie, Ill., college at Kilroe Seminary in Honesdale, Penn., and theology at Sacred Heart Monastery (now Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology in Hales Corners, Wis.).  I was asked to do graduate studies and earned a master’s in classical languages and a licentiate in theology at Catholic University in Washington, DC, and a licentiate in Sacred Scripture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome.   I also had a year of special training in spirituality and spiritual direction at the Institute for Spiritual Leadership in Chicago.

The ministries I have been involved in are all connected with the formation of others preparing to become priests and/or religious.  I taught Scripture for five years at Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology, but most of my ministry has been in spiritual formation and spiritual direction.  I find fulfillment in this ministry.  This is what I believe God wants of me and what God has formed me to be.

For fun I play golf.  I dabble in collecting coins.  I enjoy watching old movies.  I taught myself to do counted cross-stitching and it provides me with a way of making a truly personal gift for friends and family.

Up until August 16 of this year I had been the director of novices for our province. This is a ministry I truly loved. As of September 1 I am now among the officially “retired” members of our province.   I will miss the ministry of being involved in the formation of our candidates, novices and temporarily professed religious. It was great working with the members of our formation team and the other formation directors I met through our involvement in the Intercommunity Novitiate program. I receive so much energy and hope just being with our men in initial formation and those in other religious communities. I plan to spend the rest of this academic year with our community at our Dehon Formation House in Chicago and then move to our senior residence at Sacred Heart at Monastery Lake in Franklin, Wis.

Besides all that was part of my life as a formation director and member of this community, I have found that I have become more involved in a kind of “street ministry” with the poor and the homeless people who come to our door or whom I meet in our neighborhood.  I gather clothes for them, offer them food, funds for transportation, make them aware of other resources that are available to them.  Sometimes I just listen to what is going on in their lives.

What attracts me to the SCJs is that I believe that our founder, Fr. Leo John Dehon, took the heart of the gospel of Jesus and said:  “This is what our community is going to be about.”  Jesus’ life was spent in loving, available obedience to His Father.  Jesus came to this earth to “show us the face of God” as Joseph Ratzinger (now pope emeritus) said in his book about Jesus.  Jesus spent his life doing the will of the Father so we could come to believe that we have a God who loves us tremendously and wants us just to love Him back and to show that love for Him by showing love for one another, especially those of us whose condition in life makes it so difficult to believe that we have a God who loves us.

When I left home, I did so because I believed God wanted me to be a priest.  I feel I grew into understanding what it meant to be an SCJ religious.  Now I don’t know how else to live.  This is where God wants me to be and I am truly blessed.

Fr. Tim Gray, SCJ

My quiet, uneventful boyhood life in the Detroit suburbs was jolted loose in 1961 by an “apparition:” an SCJ named Fr. Justin Guiltnane came to our grade school to give a vocation talk and filled me with the desire to become a missionary. So at the age of 13, I left home for the minor seminary and the saga continues 50 years later.

I never actually became a missionary, but I have traveled far, not only in miles, but in culture and spirituality. I have had a very interesting life.

After spending what seemed like way too many years in the seminary, I felt called to drop my initial plans for graduate school and a teaching career. Following my ordination in 1978, I began parish ministry.

I had the chance to spend four years in an SCJ parish in Toronto, which opened up my experience of living in other countries, and other SCJ provinces. In 1984 I responded to an invitation from Fr. Mike Burke, then provincial superior, to study Spanish in Mexico. For almost 30 years, most of it in Houston, Texas, my experience among the Hispanic people was a true conversion experience for me and has deeply affected my spirituality and my pastoral action.

I find the SCJ community a very affirming and challenging place to look at the world from the “underside,” from the point of view of the poor and marginalized. My contacts with many SCJs from other provinces, especially in Latin America, affirms the ability of our Dehonian charism to cross cultural and language barriers, and bring about justice and reconciliation between peoples.

It was a bit surprising to me, after my sabbatical in 2011, to be given the opportunity to serve in the formation community. It has been so much fun. The young people, full of enthusiasm and idealism, remind me of my own youthful days, and keep me from getting stale. The presence of graduate students from different countries also makes the house a very interesting place to be. I keep involved outside the house by celebrating Mass (in Spanish) at local parishes, and also working with immigrants. I look forward with hope toward the future of our province, and of the whole SCJ congregation.

Fr. Andrzej Sudol, SCJ

I am Andrzej Sudol and have been a priest for 18 years. I was born and ordained in Poland. Just after my ordination I left for our new SCJ mission in India. I worked for three years in Kerala, in the south of India, as a member of the formation team. Then, I had to leave my “first love” (India) because of visa problems. I was asked to join our mission in the Philippines where I was until recently. First I worked in a parish in Mindanao. Then I was involved with the Dehonian Youth Program, vocation promotion, and was in-charge of on-going formation of the young priests in our region. The last eight years I spent at the formation house in Cagayan de Oro as a formator of the postulants. Meanwhile I studied formation and I got STL on spirituality at Milltown, Dublin, in Ireland.

I come from a town called Mielec in Poland; my whole family lives there still. My parents are now retired. My father was a technician at the airplane factory in Mielec and mother was a midwife. I have two sisters. Ewa is a teacher and Gosia is a nurse. They both are settled with their own families. I always spend quality time with them during my vacation.

Since my father was a soccer player I inherited this hobby from him. I like sports. At present I play tennis, jog and bike. I like geography, Asian cultures and different styles of life. I love to meet new people and friends. I always wanted to be a missionary and I am grateful to God for my vocation.

At present I have a sabbatical break. I am staying at the formation house in Chicago and am happy to be a part of the community and life here. It is a great adventure and fun to be here in the U.S. Province. It is also a time to rest and to discern my future. I believe I will meaningfully achieve this goal with the help of my friends and brother religious. After my sabbatical I will start another chapter in my life. I always hope to follow our founder, Fr Dehon, closer and serve the Lord better.

Fr. Antony Wijaya, SCJ

I never dreamt that I would be in the United States! Twelve years ago, back then in Indonesia, I was only an ordinary SCJ who was studying philosophy and theology; it was the pathway to my ordination.

Conversations among my peers were about working in SCJ parishes or get involved in other ministries such as retreat houses or schools. I used to think that such conversations reflect the Dehonian charism, the passion to care about the needs of the local Church.

A big shift came in my life when the SCJ director of education asked me about becoming a sociologist. He convinced me that in the future Fr. Dehon’s charism will need to be implemented in Indonesian society in new ways. To do so, we must observe and understand the society very well. This talk ignited my interest in the social sciences. It opened my mind.

Here I am now, in the United States, studying sociology at Loyola University of Chicago, pursuing my master’s degree. I always realize that as an SCJ I have chances and opportunities to develop my knowledge and my spiritual life in different countries. I am grateful to the U.S. Province that made this happen for me.

Fr. John Chrysostom Nam Van Nguyen, O.Cist.

A member of the Cistercian Order of the Holy Family in Vietnam (O.Cist.), I am in residence with the formation community while I study for my doctorate in ministry at Catholic Theological Union. If all goes as planned, I hope to complete my studies next summer.

Known as “Nam” I am 47, made my first profession with the Cistercians in 1997 and was ordained in 2010 in Vung Tau City, Vietnam.

I thank the SCJ community for everything it has done to help me!