Vocation Story
Father John Hollicay, CM
I was born, raised and lived most of my life in Wilmington, Delaware. I attended my parish elementary school and graduated from 
Salesianum High School in 1976. I felt the stirrings of a vocation during my high school years and had contact with the diocesan vocation director in Wilmington, but did not further pursue a vocation. For a while, I attended University of Delaware. I also held a variety of jobs, including food service and multiplex theater management.
As I approached the age of forty, I began to reconsider my earlier desire to become a priest. After prayer and discussion, I was drawn toward a religious community that served the poor. I began to explore religious communities that fit this profile. During this time, I was working as a volunteer in the Senior Center in my parish, the Cathedral of St. Peter in Wilmington. It was there that I met Sr. Edith McGinley, a Daughter of Charity who served at St. Peter’s. I hadn’t discussed with her that I was considering religious life, but one day she startled me by asking if I had ever considered becoming a priest. When I told her of my desire to be a priest in a community that serves the poor, she told me about the Vincentians.
Sr. Edith put me in touch with Fr. Tom Butler in Germantown, and he set up a meeting with Fr. John Kettelberger, the vocation director at that time. I attended a Discernment Weekend and met many Vincentians and others like myself who were discerning priesthood and brotherhood.
I applied to the Vincentians and was accepted into the formation program at Oyster Bay, NY in August 1998. I completed my undergraduate degree at St. John’s University over the following two years, and am now in my first year of theology at Immaculate Conception Seminary in Huntington, NY. My time with the Vincentians has been a wonderful experience and of great spiritual and personal growth. I look forward to continuing my studies, and God willing, many years of service.
John Holliday, C.M., Vincentian
