CV NEWS FEED // A former field artillery officer who was ordained a priest on June 8 plans to eventually return to the military as an active-duty chaplain in the U.S. Army.
According to a news release from the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, Fr. Joshua Miller was ordained in the Diocese of Winona-Rochester. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 2012, and then served five years on active duty. His time in the military included deployments to Japan and Korea, among other locations.
Fr. Miller was raised Evangelical, and eventually converted to Catholicism as an adult.
“As a teenager, I developed a love for theology and considered pursuing pastoral ministry,” he said, according to the news release. “During this period, I also recall being inspired by the Apostle Paul’s exhortation in 1 Corinthians 7 that more people remain unmarried to serve the Lord with an undivided heart. Years later, at the end of a long intellectual journey into the Catholic Church, the thought of the priesthood came to mind.”
He continued:
I moved into the John Paul II House of Discernment in St. Francis, WI, where I learned anew how to pray, and in that process I discerned a desire for deeper and more intimate communion with the Lord, which directed me toward the seminary and the priesthood.
Fr. Miller went to Saint Paul Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. According to the archdiocesan news release, he will serve as a diocesan priest for the next three years before returning to the military as a chaplain.
The news release added that Fr. Miller’s chaplaincy is “greatly anticipated” by the Army. As CatholicVote previously reported, the Army and other military branches have suffered from a lack of chaplains to minister to the spiritual needs of hundreds of thousands of Catholic military members worldwide.
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