Growing up in St. Paul, Deacon David Hottinger, 34, went to Mass each Sunday. He said prayers before meals with his family. He attended Nativity of Our Lord parish and school, and at one point saw clearly that heaven is life’s goal and the best thing is helping others get there.

Then came graduation from high school in 2005 at Cretin-Derham Hall in St. Paul, college and a slow drift away from Catholic practices and teachings before a solid re-anchoring, this time in religious life, said Deacon Hottinger, in the days leading up to his May 29 ordination to the priesthood in the religious community Pro Ecclesia Sancta.

“It’s a miracle of God’s mercy that I came back at all,” Deacon Hottinger said. “But I did, thanks be to God.”

Deacon Hottinger and Deacon Joseph Barron, also from the Twin Cities, are Pro Ecclesia Sancta’s first U.S. vocations. They were to be ordained together, along with five men for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul. Their ordination marks an important step for the religious community, which was founded in Peru in 1992, Deacon Hottinger said.

“It’s a real sign that our charism has come to the States,” he said. Any barriers of language and culture will be further removed by U.S. vocations, he said, as Pro Ecclesia shares Christ’s love and call to holiness, particularly through devotion to his sacred heart and the Eucharist.

Deacon Hottinger said his journey away from the Church was marked not by a rebellion, but by a lack of commitment fueled by uncertainty and doubt. But as he earned bachelor’s degrees in economics and history at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the Lord began to change that, Deacon Hottinger said. He began attending Mass again, discovered the writings of G.K. Chesterton, and by his senior year, was regularly visiting the adoration chapel at Holy Redeemer in Madison, just a block from where he was living, and on his route to school and work.

In his senior year, he said, praying in that chapel, with thoughts of a life with a wife and family, he asked, “Where is this headed? And I knew, or feared, that it would lead to the priesthood.”

Earning his undergraduate degrees but still uncertain what to do, he moved for nine months to Chicago, where he continued with his prayer life, lived with friends, found work and was admitted to the University of Minnesota Law School. He returned to the Twin Cities in 2011 and graduated with a law degree in 2013.

He also began attending daily Mass and weekly confession at St. Mark in St. Paul, where he met the Pro Ecclesia Sancta community, whose ministry includes the parish. Impressed by their spirituality and way of life, discerning more deeply his own call to religious life and the priesthood, Deacon Hottinger joined the religious community. He took his first vows with Pro Ecclesia in 2015 and began formation for the priesthood.

His first assignment as a priest will be as an associate pastor at St. Mark, where he has been the last six years as he studied for the priesthood at The St. Paul Seminary, Deacon Hottinger said. He will celebrate his Mass of Thanksgiving at St. Mark as well, 11 a.m. May 30. It will be good to dive more deeply into the parish community and help bring more souls to Christ, he said, much as he saw himself doing way back in grade school.

“It’s a challenge,” Deacon Hottinger said. “The work of a priest isn’t easy. But it will be a grace,” particularly in the sacrament of the Eucharist. “It is a beautiful opportunity. If we have faith, (God) will do great things, as he always does.”