Two married Brisbane men, Conrado Medequiso and Paul Jensen, will be ordained to the permanent diaconate at St Stephen’s Cathedral tomorrow. Source: Catholic Leader.
Mr Medequiso, a father of four, is a parishioner at Our Lady of the Southern Cross, Springfield, and has worked as an internal auditor for the Ipswich City Council for more than a decade.
Originally from the Philippines, Mr Medequiso entered the Catholic Church in his third year of secondary education from his Protestant background.
He had felt a calling to the priesthood at an early age but because of significant discouragement from the entrenched Protestantism in his family, he did not pursue it.
Mr Medequiso married his wife Lana and they had four children. His family moved to Australia in 2007 and to Brisbane in 2011.
As ordination day looms, Mr Medequiso said he felt some anxiousness because he would be “issuing a blank cheque”.
“I am hopeful and excited as well because God is leading me, whatever the journey will be,” he said. “I know that God is with me.”
Mr Jensen, who is the director of mission and formation at Centacare and a pastoral director at Holy Spirit Seminary, is a parishioner at Our Lady of Mt Carmel, Coorparoo.
He is married to his wife Karen and has three children and one grandchild. He was born in Sydney and has lived in both Papua New Guinea and Denmark.
Baptised in the Methodist Church, he was confirmed in the Uniting Church as a child and ordained in the Uniting Church in 1991. He spent 20 years ministering in the Uniting Church, reaching a leadership role that shepherded the equivalent of a Catholic diocese.
“To relinquish that was a very difficult process, but also a necessary process, something that I took two years to discern,” he said.
Mr Jensen was received into the Catholic Church at Easter 2011 and had been happily living the life of a layperson for about 10 years when at the end of the 2020, he felt a “warm wash of the Holy Spirit” and a calling to consider the diaconate and was accepted.
In the lead-up to his ordination, he has felt a deep sense of self-emptying and feels prepared to be of service in whatever way the Church calls him.
FULL STORY
Meet the two men being ordained to the permanent diaconate this Saturday (By Joe Higgins, The Catholic Leader)
