Seminarians prepare for priesthood ordination Divine inspiration led Marco Rangel to the calling By Jeff Miller Special to The Texas Catholic It’s been a hectic few weeks for Marco Rangel.   He recently completed his final exams at St. Mary’s Seminary in Houston, only to leave soon after on a two-week mission trip to Vietnam. He was one of a handful of seminarians who accompanied the Sisters of Charity as it ministers to the underprivileged. He left on May 17 — his 27th birthday. “It’s a 31-hour flight,” Rangel said recently from Houston. “The whole 24 hours of my birthday will be spent on a plane.” On June 5, Rangel’s journey in faith will culminate in his ordaination at the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Rangel is the middle child in a family that moved to North Texas from central Mexico when he was a youngster. Older sister Berenice said the girls often enjoyed picking on their only brother. “Then he got taller,” said Berenice, a first-grade teacher in Garland, “and it was, ‘Never mind.’” Rangel’s path to priesthood began to take root more than 10 years ago, when he was a junior at Rowlett High School. He was prepared to apply to colleges but acted upon a somewhat subtle desire to investigate the priesthood. “It really came out of nowhere, and I really do mean this,” Rangel said. “Nobody asked me, and I really wasn’t that active in the church.” Rangel began investigating the option on the Internet as he moved into his senior year. He also talked with various people in the diocese, including Father Michael Forge, then the vocations director. “It wasn’t a person. It wasn’t a flier. It wasn’t anything I saw,” he said. “Really, the Holy Spirit inspired me.” Berenice recalled that episode in family history. “He mentioned becoming a priest. We were like, ‘OK.’ At least to me it wasn’t a shock,” she said. “He really looked into it and did all the investigating and all the things he needed to do. I was really proud of him.” Both of them noted that their father, Jesús, took the longest to accept the idea. Jesús Rangel was a migrant worker in north Texas before moving the entire family from Acámbaro, in the state of Guanajuato northwest of Mexico City, so they could all be together. Jesús Rangel assumed his only son would someday take over the construction business that he later built and carry on the family name. “My grandmother, my father’s mother, took care of Marco a lot and talked to Dad,” Berenice said. “She made him see that’s what he wanted to do and support him. He came around.” It helped that he was only a few hours away in Houston and spent his pastoral year at St. Rita in north Dallas. Asked about the biggest surprise of his seminary experience, Rangel said, “There’s such a richness to our Catholic faith that I hadn’t expected. That really impressed me, how little I knew before.” Jeff Miller of DeSoto is a frequent contributor to The Texas Catholic.

John Szatkowski’s survival at birth part of bigger plan By Jeff Miller Special to The Texas Catholic A pair of hands grabbed Karen Szatkowski by the shoulders, pulling her up off her bed from a Saturday afternoon rest. At least that’s how it felt.   It was 1983, and Karen was scheduled to give birth in three weeks to her second child. But after being jolted into a sitting position, she told husband Paul something was wrong and they should head to the hospital immediately. Something was wrong. Karen’s doctor recognized the fetus was in distress. The doctor said had Karen waited until her next scheduled visit, Baby John probably wouldn’t have lived. Considering the details of John’s birth, Karen wasn’t surprised he dedicated his life to God and faith — and will be ordained as a priest in the Diocese of Dallas on June 5 at the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Karen remembered her baby boy was the color of dark blue jeans when he was delivered. She had passed along a virus through the placenta resulting in viral pneumonia. He came home after three weeks, surviving by the grace of God and a mother’s intuition, the doctor said. “Now it makes so much sense. I just wish God didn’t scare me so bad,” Karen said recently with a laugh by phone from their home in The Woodlands, where they moved from Richardson about five years ago. “It was such a huge plan. I should have just dropped him off at the church: ‘Here, Lord. He’s yours.’” John enjoyed the Catholic experience starting as a youngster. He became an altar server at St. Mark the Evangelist in Plano in the fifth grade and soon became a sacristan. When he or sisters Kimberly and Kelli traveled on weekends for various activities, the family always brought along John’s church clothes in case he needed to serve. Szatkowski, speaking from St. Mary’s Seminary in Houston, said the idea of becoming a priest began as a quiet voice in the back of his head. “By the seventh or eighth grade,” he said, “the voice became louder and louder.” Szatkowski was placed in charge of St. Mark’s altar servers, which included Tom Chaney. “He had high standards, but in general he was a pretty forgiving guy,” said Chaney, who teaches Latin at Christian Life Prep in Fort Worth. “John was the youngest [sacristan] we’d ever had at the time. He probably wouldn’t have been entrusted with it except that he was a very gifted and very dutiful person.” As Szatkowski’s time at seminary closes, his mother almost forgot that June 5, ordination day, is also John’s birthday. He reminded his mom that his ordination cake should double as a birthday cake. “I had to tell the lady at the bakery to put little priests on one side and balloons on the other,” Karen said. Jeff Miller of DeSoto is a frequent contributor to The Texas Catholic. (c) 2010 The Texas Catholic