‘Heart of the diocese’
Newly ordained priests and deacons for the Diocese of Charlotte who started their studies at St. Joseph College Seminary in Mount Holly with Father Brian Becker. (Photo by Troy C. Hull)CHARLOTTE —This month’s ordinations mark two milestones for the Diocese of Charlotte. For the first time, all of those ordained priests and deacons are a product of St. Joseph College Seminary, the diocese’s own homegrown incubator for priestly vocations. And two priests instrumental with the seminary’s founding mark their own jubilee anniversaries of ordination.
The ordinations of seven deacons on June 7 and six priests on June 14 reflect the growing impact of the college seminary. Since its founding in 2016, St. Joseph College Seminary in Mount Holly has become a catalyst for the diocese’s thriving vocation efforts – forming young men close to home, grounded in the parishes they will one day serve.
In its nine years, the seminary has welcomed 75 men, and so far 14 have completed formation and been ordained priests.
The new priests and deacons – who began their formation at St. Joseph between 2017 and 2021 – say the college seminary made “a big difference” as it is close to home and involves clergy they know.
“It made a lot easier to say OK to it because I’m staying locally,” said newly ordained Father Christopher Angermeyer, whose home parish is St. Thomas Aquinas in Charlotte.
“I knew all the priests that were involved, so it made a bit of the decision easier. I knew these priests and I trusted them.”
Father Matthew Kauth, who has served as rector since its founding, notes, “The seminary provides real continuity because the men grow up in our parishes, are fostered by our families, and their formation and growth in virtue is rooted in the diocese. It helps to root them in this diocese where they will eventually serve.
“The seminary, in essence, becomes the heart of the diocese.”
Close to home
Founded by Bishop Peter Jugis in response to rising interest in the priesthood among local teens and college-age men, St. Joseph College Seminary stands out nationally. It’s the only minor seminary between Washington, D.C., and Miami, and the only one dedicated to serving a specific diocese in the Southeast.
Bishop Jugis, a Charlotte native, envisioned the seminary as a place where much-needed vocations for the growing diocese could begin early – without sending young men far from home.
In a 2024 interview, Bishop Jugis recounted there were few options in the diocese when he was considering the priesthood. In his own discernment as a teenager growing up in Charlotte, he recalled being told to go take some philosophy classes in college and come back after graduation.
“After I became bishop, we began to discover, in responding to the needs of the times, that there were more and more young people in their late teens who were approaching the diocese and their pastors about feeling called to the priesthood or consecrated life,” he said. “I didn’t feel it right to say, ‘Well, come back in two or three years,’ because they were hungry for formation, much like I was.”
A place to belong
The seminary began modestly – eight men living in a former convent behind St. Ann Church in Charlotte. A permanent building opened in 2020 on an 86-acre site, with Gothic-style architecture reminiscent of nearby Belmont Abbey College, where the seminarians earn their bachelor’s degrees and go on to major seminaries elsewhere to complete their formation.
The proximity of the seminary to home is not just practical, it’s vital, seminarians and clergy agree.
“Honestly, I’m not sure I would have entered seminary without having it,” said newly ordained Deacon Michael Lugo. “Being able to visit regularly, see the community and be a part of it in some way was a huge benefit to my discernment.”
The college seminarians follow a rigorous daily routine similar to what they would in major seminary or in a religious order: daily Mass and prayer time, spiritual direction, classes, chores, fellowship and more.
“There’s a better understanding of what being in (major) seminary is like,” explains Father Angermeyer. “I think it makes young men feel more comfortable actually trying to enter.”
The sense of familiarity and connection is by design. Seminarians remain active throughout the diocese, attending diocesan liturgies, serving in parishes during their summer breaks, and helping with vocations camps like Quo Vadis Days. These encounters enable young men considering the priesthood to meet peers who have taken the first steps – and see their own path more clearly.
Newly ordained Father Nicholas Kramer said when he was younger, he would drive down to the seminary in Mount Holly and hang out for a day. That was hugely impactful, he says.
“When the time came when I did enter seminary, it wasn’t like I was isolated from my friends and family. I knew a lot of people there already just because of the things in the local diocese. I was connected to the diocese, which I think as a diocesan priest is a really important thing for us early on in formation, to get connected to our diocese.
Because for us, our diocese is the place in which, unless the bishop decides to send me somewhere else, I will be ministering for the rest of my life.”
This presence of seminarians in and around the diocese, and the opportunity to forge strong bonds of brotherhood, were also key for John Cuppett, who was ordained a transitional deacon earlier this month.
“Watching them gave me courage to follow our Lord as well,” Deacon Cuppett says.
He originally went to Belmont Abbey College on a baseball scholarship before discerning a vocation. He describes the community aspect of the seminary as “the perfect seedbed” with all the elements necessary to help develop his relationship with Christ.
“Fostering a life of prayer provided the structure to order my life around the source and summit of my faith in the Eucharist and the sacraments, which is the essence of the priesthood,” he says.
‘Whatever I have, they have’
This year’s celebration is also a special moment for two key figures in the college seminary’s founding. Father Kauth and Father Christopher Gober, the diocese’s longtime vocations director, are both celebrating 25 years of priesthood. The two grew up together and were both ordained on June 3, 2000, for the Charlotte diocese.
Father Gober, who is stepping down in July after 21 years as vocations director to focus on the needs of his growing Winston-Salem parish, helped support the establishment of the college seminary and guided the ordination of 57 men to the priesthood during his tenure.
“It’s been a tremendous blessing to serve the people of God in the various parishes I’ve been assigned to, and to do my small part to try to cultivate vocations to the priesthood for the diocese over these many years,” he says.
For Father Kauth, the experience of mentoring seminarians is deeply personal.
“Whatever I’ve gained as a priest I pour into them,” he says. “Whatever I have, they have. Through this work you expand your influence, and it multiplies as these men go on to the priesthood. It’s a form of fatherhood, and I could not be more delighted than to be able to have this experience of spiritual fatherhood.”
A future formed in faith
As the six newly ordained priests begin their ministries, they carry with them the impact of formation rooted in diocesan soil – formed by priests they knew, shaped in the parishes where they first heard the call.
“Although it’s hard to measure success when determining the work of the Holy Spirit, I would credit most, if not all the success, to the formation at the seminary,” says Deacon Cuppett. “It was there that the faith and the Scriptures were opened to me and the Church of Jesus Christ was presented in the most extraordinary way.”
Newly ordained Father Bryan Ilagor adds, “While many dioceses in the United States may struggle with ordaining a few and sometimes no vocations for ordinations, the Diocese of Charlotte has many good men willing to sacrifice to serve the local Church. I feel more prepared during these past seven years to honor my commitment to the Diocese of Charlotte with newly ordained Bishop Michael Martin to say yes, Lord, to the best of my abilities, ‘I come to do your will.’”
— Christina Lee Knauss. Kimberly Bender contributed. Archive photos.
