By MATTHEW PEASLEE, Associate Editor, Pittsburgh Catholic

The Few. The Proud. Father Bill Christy is in rare company.

As a 17-year-old, the western Pennsylvania native answered the call to serve when he joined the Marines after graduating high school in 1982. He attended Holy Ghost Preparatory in the eastern part of the state before joining the naval infantry.

“I wanted something of service with a mission greater than my own self,” Father Christy said. “I wanted to be amongst the people of the world — to learn about them and know them. I also wanted that sense of community and camaraderie. As a teenager, that to me meant joining the Marines.”

After five years in the Marines, he joined the Spiritans — the Congregation of the Holy Spirit — at Duquesne University.

“Joining the Marines was my full start into becoming a Spiritan,” Father Christy said. “I found all of what I wanted in the Spiritans, to answer a call of telling the good news.”

Father Christy studied theology in Chicago with a deep focus on being a missionary, religious priest. He was ordained in 1992 and embarked on a journey to Tanzania, East Africa. In the Archdiocese of Arusha, an area without many paved roads, electricity or running water, he worked for 15 years as a missionary priest.

He called it “camping for kingdom.”

“The big challenge of course is to enculturate the Gospel,” Father Christy said. “To allow the Gospel to be known in that local culture, not only to be translated by word but in images. That takes deep knowledge of the people in their own culture. We have to delve into the traditional knowledge of faith and people to find the expressions that communicate the Gospel effectively.”  Read the full article on Pittsburgh Catholic's website. 

Read about how Spiritan founder Claude Poullart des Places helped foster vocations.