It’s unusual that brothers find themselves in the seminary studying for the priesthood at the same time — but that’s happened to two men in New Orleans. The Clarion Herald profiled them recently:

At a time when the U.S. church is fervently praying and diligently searching for vocations to the priesthood,Notre Dame Seminary has a rare and hopeful story: two brothers, born five years apart, are studying to become priests for the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

Kevin DeLerno, 34, is five years younger than his older brother Chris DeLerno, 39,but he is further along in his seminary studies. Kevin is in the middle of his fourth and final year oftheological studies and hopes to be ordained to the priesthood in 2008; Chris is in his second year of theology at Notre Dame.

Both DeLernos attended Archbishop Rummel High School and were longtime parishioners at St. Edward the Confessor in Metairie.

Kevin said the thought of studying for the priesthood first surfaced in the mid-1990s when he was attending daily Mass with his father and mother, who were getting “in close contact with their faith.” Father Vien The Nguyen, who was in residence at St. Edward, innocently asked Kevin if he might consider checking out the priesthood.

His initial answer was simple: “No.”

“I didn’t think about it until a few years later when I started working with the LifeTeen program at St. Edward,” Kevin said. “During that process I got a lot closer to my faith. It started out with trying to bring teenagers closer to the faith. That was a program I didn’t have when I grew up.I went on a retreat with them and experienced the presence of the Lord.”

Kevin eventually got an associate’s degree in graphic arts at Delgado Community College and worked doing layouts for an advertising sign company. His world was rocked in 2001 when his mother, healthy her entire life, was diagnosed with a fast-acting form of leukemia and died eight weeks later.

“It was actually the cure that killed her,”Kevin said.“She was in remission when they did the autopsy.”

Kevin said he was fortunate his family was so supportive of him considering the priesthood.

“I’ve heard seminarians tell me their parents told them, ‘Oh, no, I don’t want you to be a priest because you’re too good-looking and I want grandkids,’” Kevin said. “That’s not exactly a way to foster vocations in the family. Sometimes the generation that grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, it was all about me. Now some of their teenagers who are involved in LifeTeen and other retreats are getting closer to the Lord, and in some ways they are bringing their parents closer to the faith. The parents want to know Jesus the way their kids do.”

Chris has taken a much more circuitous route to the seminary than Kevin. Chris earned an English degree at LSU and then entered the Air Force. Chris was married, but despite many years of counseling, that relationship ended in divorce and later was annulled by the church.

“I guess really the biggest break in our marriage was my desire to serve the Lord andher desire to want nothing to do with it,” Chris said. “It was all under the surface and then all of a sudden it was exposed. When Kevin told me he was going to become a priest and go to the seminary, a whole lot of thoughts and wonderings came back up.”

Chris said he was able to return to Louisiana during his mother’s illness and help his father care for her.

“Through the grace of God I was able to see her through that process and say goodbye to her,” Chris said. “During that process I continued to pray and consider and see what the Lord had in store for me.”

Going through the seminary is no guarantee that someone will be ordained, the DeLerno brothers said.

“Everything is a discernment to a point,” Chris said. “We can minister to people in so many ways, in how we talk and relate to someone at work; how we love people by just listening to them and sharing a few minutes of time. My desire is to get deeper and deeper in love with Jesus.”

Kevin said he can see many powerful changes in the relationship he now shares with his brother.

“Many years ago the two of us couldn’t have talked for more than two minutes without playing a video game together,” Kevin said. “When he told me he wanted to be a priest, we spoke for 45 minutes, and our relationship has exploded. I was able to share my faith with him.”

Let’s keep the DeLernos, and all those discerning a call to the religious life, in our prayers.

Photo: by Frank J. Methe, Clarion Herald