Father Kevin Girardi said trust was a significant factor in his vocation to the priesthood.
Putting his trust in God years ago began a journey that resulted in ordination in the sacrament of Holy Orders as a priest on Saturday, May 17 at Westerville St. Paul the Apostle Church.
Father Girardi, 31, hails from the west side of Columbus and graduated from Hilliard Bradley High School. He was baptized at Columbus St. Cecilia Church and grew up in Columbus Holy Family Church downtown, where he first received the sacraments of the Eucharist and reconciliation and was later confirmed.
He described being captured by the beauty of the church: the altar, the statues and the music each Sunday. The beauty sparked wonder of the Catholic faith and the priesthood, he said, and ultimately planted the seed for his vocation.
After graduating from Hilliard Bradley, Father Girardi left Columbus to attend Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering in 2016.
The newly ordained priest credited the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Center at Purdue University as the place where he first encountered joyful witnesses of the Gospel. Dominican friars served the campus’ Catholic center, and he was one of many students actively involved.
He established a prayer routine for the first time in his life, he explained. Each day before class included a stop at the Adoration chapel to spend five or 10 minutes in prayer, talking with God.
The simple routine translated to “growing in trust with the Lord throughout those years of college,” he said.
“The priesthood really wasn’t on the forefront of my mind. I had many friends, had many activities, had girlfriends throughout my college time, but it wasn’t until after college, where I went off – I got a job with Toyota in Michigan and was working as an engineer, and that relationship of trust just continued to build with the Lord.”
While working as a design engineer in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Father Girardi’s prayer routine expanded. He began attending and then serving at daily Mass. He made a daily Holy Hour in addition to praying a rosary and reading Scripture every day. Spending such time in prayer, he explained, built on the trust he had established in God.
It was when that trust could be described as at its pinnacle that the Lord made an ask.
“I had everything – all these great gifts from the Lord – I had a job, I had a girlfriend, had a home, had friends, had a wonderful parish,” he said. “And then, of course, when the Lord gives you all these gifts, all these beautiful, wonderful things and that relationship of trust is there with the Lord, that’s when He made that call of clarity to the priesthood very, very, very, very powerful – asking that I give Him back all of those good things that He’d given me so that He could give me the gift of my vocation.
“If He would have asked me to do that years before, that relationship of trust would not have been there, and I probably would have been scared off by a big ask like that from the Lord. But because for years leading up to that I had grown that relationship with the Lord … when He asked something really big – even though everything in my life seemed perfect, seemed settled – I could trust Him enough to say, ‘OK, you’re asking for all of these things back. I will give them to You, and I will follow where You want.’”
While the call to the priesthood was clear, leaving a secure job was no easy feat.
Father Girardi said he went back and forth about the call for months. Thinking with a worldly mind, not the mind of Christ, he said, he questioned whether the call was the Lord’s or his imagination.
“Of course, in the midst of all of that, I get a raise at work; I get a promotion. Things were going so great with all the community that I was with at the parish up there and thinking, ‘Oh, the Lord wouldn’t have given me all these great things if He was really calling me,’” he had justified, “but I remember there was one day where I walked into work and it was as if the Holy Spirit just took over.”
Father Girardi recalled thinking, “Alright, I have to do this today,” although he had not originally planned to. He said he simply could not “shake this call anymore” and needed to do something.
He called the Diocese of Columbus’ then-vocation director Father Paul Noble during a lunch break and expressed interest in applying for seminary. He recalled the joyful response from Father Noble and later starting studies in the fall of 2018, the beginning of seven years of formation at the Pontifical College Josephinum.
He typed a letter of resignation at work and went to his boss’ office to relay the news.
“I walked out of the office thinking, ‘I’m finally at peace,’” he said. “‘I’m finally doing what the Lord is calling me to,’ and that peace – that little 30 seconds of peace there – I’ve hung on to that for the past seven years.”
Back home in Columbus, Father Girardi said he felt much like a nomad after years spent away in Indiana for college and working in Michigan. He needed to find a home parish.
The Girardi family has deep ties to Grandview Heights, located just west of Columbus. Father Girardi’s ancestry includes Italian immigrants who settled in the area.
His father attended the former Columbus Our Lady of Victory grade school, located near Grandview in the Village of Marble Cliff. He also has a sister, who lives nearby, married at and attending Our Lady of Victory Church.
“I called up Father Romano Ciotola at the time, who was the pastor there (who died shortly after in 2019), and we talked,” Father Girardi said. “We got lunch one day, and he was just overjoyed that he’d have a seminarian there at Victory.”
He described studying for the priesthood at the Josephinum, located in north Columbus, as a time of intense formation. Father Girardi said he was confronted with his weaknesses and habits. He explained that, in seminary, he needed to break habits that were moving him away from Christ and build ones that would conform him to the Lord.
“It’s been a real time of challenge,” he acknowledged, “but a challenge that has helped me to grow to be more like Christ and to grow into a priest.”
Father Girardi largely credited the support he received as a seminarian for completing his journey to the priesthood. The faithful in the diocese played a significant role in helping him keep going.
“Seeing the hunger that people have for the Eucharist, the hunger that people have for priests, has many, many times gotten me through difficulties throughout my formation,” he said.
“I can look to the faith of the holy people in our diocese and see how much they want Jesus, how much they want the Eucharist, how much they need the sacraments. When I see their faith, and when I see their support and experience that personally, it increases my faith, and it increases the stability of my call to the priesthood.
“I couldn’t answer this call without the faithful.”