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From: Charlotte

Age: 22

Home parish: St. Ann Church, Charlotte

Status: Started Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, Cincinnati, in August 2022

Favorite Bible verses: “How can I repay the Lord for all the great good done for me? I will raise the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all His people.” (Ps 116: 12-14)

Favorite saint: St. Peter, chosen by Jesus to lead the Church. “He is my patron, and I love seeing his journey through the Gospels as he goes from being a sinner to a saint.”

Interests (outside of faith): Playing guitar and reading a good book

CHARLOTTE — Peter Townsend was just 5 years old when he announced he wanted to become a priest.
Townsend had just attended the Diocese of Charlotte’s Eucharistic Congress and met Bishop Peter Jugis. The spark that lit his vocation was this annual celebration – a Catholic “family reunion” that draws thousands of parishioners from across North Carolina to celebrate the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.

“I told my parents at the dinner table soon after the Congress that I wanted to be the pope, which they found amusing,” he remembers. “I guess that’s who I thought Bishop Jugis was. After that, for whatever reason, the thought of becoming a priest never left me, and neither has the desire to do so.”

Townsend admits that since entering the seminary, “I have done away with my former ambitions (of the papacy) and would be happy to be a simple parish priest.”

He recently talked about his journey with the Catholic News Herald:

CNH: Can you tell us about your life before you entered the seminary?

Townsend: I grew up in Charlotte in a very close-knit, Catholic family. I was homeschooled. My parents wanted to give me a solid Catholic education, to preserve me from a lot of the things that many of my peers experienced at too early of an age, and to allow me to grow up at my own pace.

CNH: How did your parents react when you told them you wanted to study for the priesthood?

Townsend: They had always told my siblings and me that we should strive to do God’s will. And so, they said that if I thought God was calling me to the priesthood, then they would do everything they could to support me in my discernment.

CNH: What types of things have you been doing since you entered the seminary?

Townsend: I began to pray the Liturgy of the Hours every day and started praying the rosary much more often. Both of these prayers are essential to the priesthood and are crucial for priestly discernment in the seminary. However, in my opinion, one of the most important decisions I ever made was to commit myself to at least one Holy Hour a day before the Blessed Sacrament. This one-on-one time with the Lord has influenced my discernment in more ways than I could have imagined.

CNH: What advice do you have for a young man thinking about becoming a priest?

Townsend: The Lord said, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Mt 7:7). I would say the same to any man discerning the priesthood. All one has to do is simply ask God and wait for His response. The hard part is when God seemingly doesn’t want to respond, or at least seems very slow in doing so. However, if this seems to happen, it is only because the Lord is waiting for the right time to reveal His answer. He knows exactly when to answer, and whether or not the person asking is ready to hear it.

CNH: What do you like about being a seminarian for the Diocese of Charlotte?

Townsend: I love the fraternity that is reinforced in our diocese through the seminary program. Over the course of the past four years, I have gotten to know the other men studying, discerning and praying beside me, and I would not trade their brotherhood for anything.
— SueAnn Howell

Your DSA contributions at work

The Seminarian Education program is funded in part by the annual Diocesan Support Appeal. Learn more about the DSA and how to donate online at www.charlottediocese.org/dsa.