“The first time the idea came to my mind, I laughed at it,” John Bartunek says about his calling to be a priest. “I was a Protestant, not really interested in giving up the things priests have to give up. But once it was in the back of my mind, it never went away. It just kept getting brighter and brighter, like a sunrise.”
Ordained in 2003, Father Bartunek now resides in the hills above St. Peter’s Cathedral and sometimes works as a press liaison for the Vatican. A member of the Legionaries of Christ, a religious order started in Mexico and represented in more than 30 countries, he lives in community with 250 fellow legionaries. Earning an advanced degree in moral theology, he fills his time with classes, study and at least three hours a day of prayer.
He served the late Pope John Paul II’s Mass three times and jokes that everyone has a John Paul II story. “It was very exciting for me as a person with no Catholic background and then there I was serving the Pope’s Mass,” says Bartunek, who converted to Catholicism in 1991. “John Paul II was an important figure. He was a real model that you can be a priest and fulfill your manhood, that all your talents can be put to work.”
Bartunek has been able to do that as well. At Stanford he planned to become a screenwriter and producer of historical films, and he had an acting career that included bit parts in films like Rookie of the Year. As a priest, he has done unofficial consulting work for The Passion of the Christ and wrote the authorized book Inside the Passion (Ascension Press, 2005), to help Catholics and non-Catholics understand the film.
When Pope John Paul II died, Bartunek appeared on The Larry King Show and provided commentary on the funeral for the BBC. Last October he was a press liaison for the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican. “During the Synod, we all got to meet the Holy Father, Pope Benedict.“ When the pope learned Bartunek was a press liaison, he said, “Oh, it’s very difficult to make them understand, isn’t it?”
Sometimes it is, Bartunek notes. “A lot of the controversial issues are about sexual issues. I think if you look objectively at our modern society when it comes to these issues, I do not think we are particularly healthy. So maybe there is a reason why only on those issues does everyone get all upset at the Catholic Church. In a different period of history, they would have gotten upset about different teachings.”
He graduates this year after two years of study, and in accordance with his vows of obedience, chastity and poverty, he will go where his order sends him. “My time is completely, 24/7 [devoted] to serving the church. It is a sacrifice, but at the same time I do it so willingly because I believe this is where God wants me to be.”
—DEVON MAYLIE, ’05
