If anyone doesn’t know what deacons are — and, from experience, I can tell you that many don’t — here’s some help. A leading newspaper in southern Virginia, the Virginian-Pilot, has a surprisingly in-depth (and, for once, surprisingly accurate) article this weekend on deacons:

Don Poole abandoned thoughts of the priesthood as a teen after his Catholic school berated him for holding hands with a girl. But he never lost the urge to serve others spiritually.

That’s why Poole, 52, is among more than 100 applicants to the Diocese of Richmond’s new deacon training program. As ordained clergy, they could play a major role in the diocese’s response to a worsening shortage of priests.

They would also model Catholicism outside the church, because many deacons keep regular, secular jobs even while ministering to people around them.

Poole, who lives in Virginia Beach, said he would keep working as a director at DSD Laboratories in Hampton if ordained.

He’d also keep another important relationship.

“The thing I like about the deacons is that I get the privilege of staying married to my wife. We’d get to do this ministry as a team,” said Poole, who has a 22-year-old daughter.

There are 15,409 permanent Catholic deacons in the United States, compared with 41,449 priests, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

The Richmond diocese has 119 active and 50 retired priests as well as 79 active deacons, said Deacon Robert D. Ewan, the diocese’s deacon director.

Ewan said the diocese’s ideal is to have one or two deacons at each of its more than 150 parishes, most working in support of a priest.

More than a dozen deacons might also be trained as administrators to run parishes, Ewan said. Others might specialize as prison or hospital chaplains.

Ministry by deacons is mentioned in the New Testament, but it was only with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s that the modern Roman Catholic Church revived the position of permanent deacons.

The Richmond diocese sponsored a one-time diaconate formation program in 1999 that saw several dozen men ordained four years later.

Ewan said the new training program will recruit regularly, generating a steady supply of deacons.

Not every applicant will be selected, and those who are face years of schooling before ordination. Married men may become deacons but usually may not remarry if a spouse dies. Single men ordained as deacons may not marry.

The ramped-up deacons program parallels a new diocesan program for training lay people to be more involved in ministry, he said.

Ewan said the diocese could have at least 18 fewer priests in five years and face further attrition in the future. “You can see where that calls for other ministers to step up to the plate,” he said.

For Poole, applying to the diaconate reflected his life long Catholicism and striking experiences he called the touch of God’s Holy Spirit. “It’s a very warm, soothing, comforting feeling,” he said.

Poole said that if ordained, he would seek a full-time ministry after retiring at 65 from his secular career. “I’d go wherever the bishop needs me,” he said.

As clergy, deacons may baptize, witness weddings, preach and preside at funerals. They may not perform three other sacraments reserved to priests: an ointing the sick, granting absolution or reconciliation, and consecrating the wine and wafer for Communion.

Those restrictions still leave ample room for deacons to serve. At St. John the Apostle Catholic Church in Virginia Beach, Deacon Vernon Krajeski, 72, assisted at a recent Mass.

The clerical stole crossing his chest from shoulder to waist marked him as a deacon; a wedding band on his hand hinted at his 48-year marriage.

He prayed aloud at the lectern, read to parishioners from the Gospel, and set the altar table with silver cups and wine – stepping back to let St. John’s priest, the Rev. J. Morton Biber, consecrate the Communion elements.

Moments later, Krajeski, a retired data processing manager, held a cup for a line of parishioners. “Let us break bread together, on our knees,” other members sang from the pews.

Afterward, congregant Mary Giordano extolled Krajeski’s faith and biblical knowledge, though she wasn’t quite sure which sacraments he could not perform. “He knows what it’s like to be married and to have children,” she said.

Krajeski, ordained 27 years ago in New York state, explained his vocation simply. “I made a commitment to live as a follower of Jesus Christ and felt called to do more,” he said.

In Norfolk, Deacon Calvin J. Bailey, 55, serves the Basilica of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception while still working as a medical supply technician at the veteran s hospital in Hampton.

Bailey, married and a father of two, provides prayer and a pastoral ear to people facing family problems or stressful jobs. “The more a life experience is involved, the more likely they are to go to a deacon,” instead of a priest, he said.

Though he works for free as a deacon, Bailey feels richly rewarded, especially at baptisms.

“I cannot put into words what it feels like to take a person’s baby in my hands, and put that baby in the water, and lift that baby up to God,” he said.