With the touch of Bishop Robert McElroy’s hands, placed gently on his bowed head, Daniel Holgren went from saving lives to saving souls.
The paramedic is now a priest — the newest addition to the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego. Two months shy of his 36th birthday, he joined the legion of shepherds consecrated as Christ’s representatives in the world’s oldest and largest church.
He was, in some ways, a reluctant shepherd. No way was he going to be a priest, he told himself five years ago, when all this began. Absolutely.
“I am not called to be a priest,” he remembers saying.
And yet there he was on June 11, robed in white and lying prostrated on the tiled floor at St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Poway after having pledged his allegiance and obedience at his ordination Mass.
To hear him tell it, there was no lightning bolt or burning bush. Just a nagging feeling he couldn’t shake. He had a good job doing meaningful work. He had a girlfriend.
“I was happy,” he says, “but something was kind of missing.”
After his 30th birthday, things began to change.
For one thing, Holgren realized he was not interested in marrying the girl he’d been dating. “I said to myself, well, if I don’t see myself marrying her, I should probably tell her sooner rather than later and break up with her so she can find someone.”
A devout Catholic who often prayed over his problems — “prayer is like my fuel” — he wondered if there was something else the Lord was calling him to do. His father, Bob Holgren, an ordained permanent deacon at San Rafael Catholic Church in Rancho Bernardo, suggested he go see the vocation director at the diocese.
He agreed to check it out — but that’s all. Holgren, a graduate of Rancho Bernardo High School and Cal State San Marcos, told himself he’d find out what the process might entail “and then either they will reject me, or I’ll say no because it’s not something I’m going to be called to do.”
God, apparently, had other plans. Holgren went to a first meeting and then to a second one. “I kind of had a joy, a happiness and a pull in that direction,” he remembers.
It was about that time his father decided to tell him the story of what happened when he was born.
God and Rome
In August 1985, Julie Holgren was only 29 weeks into her pregnancy when she had Daniel. The doctor did not think the baby boy, who weighed 2 pounds, 7 ounces, was going to make it.
Bob Holgren sat in the hospital chapel, praying. He told God that if Daniel survived, he’d dedicate him to the Lord.
As their son grew up, Bob Holgren says he was reluctant to tell him what happened because he didn’t want to unduly influence him. But now that he was thinking about becoming a priest, he thought the time had come.
“It had an impact on him,” he says. “He could see how God was working in his life.”
In January 2016, though still not completely convinced, his son decided to go ahead and enter the diocese’s seminary, which is located on the University of San Diego campus. He told himself he’d take it one semester at a time.
“To be honest, my first semester, I was taking philosophy at USD getting ready to take theology (at the seminary) and I would meet some of the girls here and I’d say, ‘Oh, she’s cute. Maybe I can marry her. Maybe I’ll be called to marry her.’ ’’
The equivocating was exhausting. Finally, he made a deal with God. “I said, ‘All right Lord. I’m going to assume you want me to be a priest, but if you don’t want me to be a priest, you’ve got to make it abundantly clear and pull me out. Have me fall in love with one of the girls here or have a priest tell me that we don’t want you.’ “
The next year, in 2017, with his philosophy prerequisites completed, the diocese offered Holgren the chance to go to the Pontifical North American College in Rome, which is regarded as kind of the top gun school for U.S. seminarians.
Being at the epicenter of the Catholic Church was fascinating. He has a picture of him shaking the pope’s hand. He’s assisted with Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica. And he studied with seminarians from all over the world. “You see the universal church and it’s so beautiful. You realize that the world is way bigger than San Diego or California or the West Coast.”
When the pandemic hit, Holgren returned to San Diego and finished his seminary classes online. However, he plans to go back to Rome in October to complete the final year of a spirituality program.
While he was doing his coursework virtually and living at the seminary here, he spent weekends in El Cajon, where helped out at Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church. Now that he’s ordained, he will serve at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Mira Mesa until he returns to Rome.
On April 26, he received a letter from Bishop McElroy formally calling him to his ordination.
“It’s official,” he announced, grinning as he held out the letter for closer inspection. The excitement, the anticipation, were unmistakable.
“I definitely feel like I’m where I need to be.”
Shrinking numbers
That Holgren stood alone at his ordination ceremony, the sole new priest, isn’t so unusual these days. There was a time when there were plenty of seminarians lining up to become priests.
“In the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, we had more priests than we knew what to do with,” says Auxiliary Bishop John Dolan, who was St. Michael’s pastor from 2014 to 2016. Like Holgren, Dolan is a native San Diegan and when he was ordained in 1989, three other new priests stood alongside them. “That was a bumper crop,” Dolan quips.
The average now is between one to three men.
Still, the San Diego diocese’s numbers are holding their own, compared to other parts of the country. In the United States, there are 10,000 fewer active priests than there were two decades ago, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. In the same time span, the San Diego census dropped about 30 priests.
Pope Francis used the word “hemorrhaging” when describing the worldwide decline. Last year, the Vatican reported that the shortage was so pronounced that there now was only one priest for every 3,000-plus Catholics.
It is Dolan’s job to help see that the 97 parishes in this diocese, which encompasses nearly 1.4 million Catholics living in San Diego and Imperial counties, are staffed with priests. He says it takes about three to five new priests every year year to keep up — and when the ordination falls short, he turns to priests from other countries and dioceses, along with religious orders, to fill the gaps. This outside recruitment is aided by the fact that San Diego “is a great place to be.”
The latest diocese census listed 201 active priests serving here. The average salary for a diocesan priest is $2,370 a month, plus certain expenses such as housing.
Dolan doesn’t think there’s a staffing crisis.
For one thing, he points out, back in those days of soaring numbers, it was common that the only staff at a parish would be three to four priests, helped along by maybe a secretary and a housekeeper. Now, there are fewer priests, but Dolan says lay people are more involved in leadership positions.
“Most parishes, they have their youth director, they have their confirmation director, they have their religious education director, their IT director, parish finance director, secretary.”
Asked what advice he has for this new priest, Dolan says this to all of them:
“There is only one savior in the world and his name is Jesus and you don’t have to be that.”
Reasons for decline
Church observers blame the decline in new priests on several factors, among them: the increasing pressures to serve larger constituencies, not being allowed to marry and the continuing negative repercussions from the priest abuse scandals.
Russell Shaw, a former administrator with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and author of more than a dozen books about the church, adds another factor: the steady, dramatic shift away from organized religions.
“I think what we’re seeing as far as the priesthood is concerned, and as far as religion generally in the U.S. and other countries, is the erosion of religious faith resulting from pervasive secularism,” Shaw says from his home in Maryland.
He cautions against getting too alarmed at the priest-to-population ratio. In the United States, for example, although the number of self-identified Catholics is rising steadily, he points out that the actual number of practicing Catholics is far less. A 2018 Gallup poll estimated that only 39 percent of Catholics attend church weekly.
There is, however, one category of ministry that is booming — the diaconate. These permanent deacons, a position restored in the church in the 1960s, are men — including married men — who complete a two-to-four-year preparation program and then are ordained to help priests and bishops. They may baptize, marry and preach, but not hear confessions or say Mass. Bob Holgren is one of more than 100 active deacons serving this diocese and more than 18,000 across the country.
The Vatican is even studying whether to allow female deacons, which Shaw suggests is more likely than women priests.
“We are in a period of change and flux,” he adds. “Fifty years ago, a man could become a Catholic priest and know pretty well what the next 50 years of his life and career was going to look like. Today, that’s just not true. It’s an uncertain future. So I admire the courage and the bravery of the one man in your diocese who is still being ordained a Catholic priest.”
And finally
For his part, Holgren says he is convinced God is still calling Catholic men to the priesthood.
“But I think we’re so busy as a society and as a world, that we often don’t take the time to listen to what the Lord’s calling us to do.”
He jokingly describes his ordination journey as “the scenic route.” But in a moment of seriousness, he admits this: “It wasn’t really until I stopped and took some time that I was able to discern what the Lord was calling me to do.”
Father Dan, or Father Daniel if you prefer, is reluctant no more. His proof?
“The hole that I had before, that was lacking? It’s been filled.”
Dolbee is the former religion and ethics editor of The San Diego Union-Tribune and a former president of the Religion News Association. Email: sandidolbeecolumns@gmail.com.
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