the ordination of father luke turner
The Completion of a journey
by J.D. Benning How long are you willing to follow your dreams? How long does it take for a prayer to be answered? For Father Luke Turner, his childhood dream of being a priest came true much later than his sixth-grade-self ever would have expected. His mother, Thorene Turner, never stopped praying, and her prayers have finally been answered – on June 29, the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, she watched her son be ordained to the priesthood at St. Benedict’s Abbey. “This day has been a long time coming,” Thorene said as she addressed the crowd following the ordination, “a day that I have never stopped praying for. I’m so proud of my son and know that he is going to be a great priest!” “As a kid, we always had the Catholic Digest, so I started writing to the religious orders that were listed in the back, just to gather information as a kid would do,” Fr. Luke shared on a recent episode of MonkCast, St. Benedict’s Abbey’s podcast. “I had this wild dream to be a missionary in Africa.” While those dreams may be slightly different than those of your run-of-the-mill twelve-year-old, for a young Jeff Turner, he had made up his mind early. “I enrolled in Savior of the World Seminary with the intention of becoming a priest, but I wasn’t quite sure where I would land. My mom used to put me on a bus to visit [St. Benedict’s] Abbey, and I was always greeted by Fr. Regis and took part in monastic prayer,” Fr. Luke recalls. “My interest grew and after graduation, I came to Benedictine College as an ‘Abbey student’ taking courses, living in the dorms, and praying with the monks. I entered the novitiate in 1981 but felt like I 6
S t. B e n e d i c t ’ s A b b e y
Msgr. Michael Mullen (top left) has been a mentor and example to Fr. Luke for most of his life, serving as his high school seminary principal and life-long friend.
