.- The
Diocese of Wilmington experienced two firsts this weekend with the
priestly ordinations of a Mexican native and a married man, who was
formerly a Lutheran pastor.
Bishop Michael
Saltarelli ordained Salvador Magana, 34, of Guadalajara, Mexico, and
Leonard Klein, 60, a father of three adult children. Hundreds came out
for the ordination Saturday at the Cathedral of St. Peter.
Prior to the
ordination, Klein had been serving as deacon at a parish and living
with his wife of 36 years, Christa Klein, and his daughter, Renate, in
Brandywine Hundred.
Klein was
ordained a pastor for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in
1972. But he eventually “grew weary of being a voice against
liberalization [including same-sex marriage] while standing for
traditional Lutheran doctrine and liturgy,” he told the Delaware News
Journal.
So in 2002 he
approached the Catholic diocese about becoming a priest and was
approved. Klein studied at St. Mary's Seminary to fill in the gaps of
his earlier training at Yale Divinity School. Klein becomes one of 100
married men around the nation who've left other denominations to become
priests in the Catholic Church.
Salvador Magana has been living in Milford. He, too, served as a temporary deacon at a parish prior to his priestly ordination.
Magana is one of
three children in a family of 10 to enter religious life. He had felt
the call to the priesthood since age 16, but he did not know where God
was calling him to serve until he arrived in the Diocese of Wilmington
while visiting with nine other Guadalajara seminarians.
He prayed for a
year to confirm God’s call and eventually gave up his studies in Mexico
to immigrate to the United States and complete his formation at St.
Mary's Seminary in Baltimore.
Married convert, Mexican native are first of both kinds ordained in Delaware
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