Laboure Society
“God has rescued me and I want to share God's love and mercy with all people.”
Meet the rest of my class
My name is Stephen Ferrazzano. I am called to serve Christ and His Church as a priest with the Diocese of Winona-Rochester. This is my story.
In my early years, I experienced loneliness and did not have much of a faith. After some conversion experiences in my family, we began attending protestant services more regularly. The small amount of Christian faith I carried into adolescence soon grew lukewarm, and as a teen, I was focused on the world and sought only my own happiness. Church wasn’t a priority for me and I convinced myself that God didn’t care. This ultimately brought me only more anxiety and pain, as I pushed God further and further into the background.
Yet a spark of God’s love remained in my heart, and by the end of high school, I decided to tend to the spark and study theology. I thought I might become a protestant minister with a wife and children of my own someday.
As I began my studies, I was initially more hostile towards the Catholic Church, but God wasn’t finished with me. He blessed me with a love of history, and as I studied theology and history side-by-side, I realized that the Catholic Church is true. Some solid theology classes helped me learn more about this truth.
I was drawn to ancient hermits and beautiful Catholic liturgies, and entered RCIA (the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults – classes in the Catholic Faith) and converted at the age of 19. Immediately, I began to consider the priesthood.
Further spiritual development was needed, though, so I finished my studies and entered the workforce. Soon, my vocation director prompted me to apply to the seminary. At seminary, with God’s grace, I began to be formed into a different man. Trust in God grew within me and broke through the hard shell around my heart.
God has rescued me and I want to share God’s love and mercy with all people, showing them through my own experience that God never gives up on His children. As I think about the priesthood, I look forward to hearing confessions, granting absolution, and helping people start anew with God’s grace. The sacraments are truly life-giving. Just as I have received new life from them, I want to help others experience the sacraments in this same way.
God truly has a sense of humor, as He brought an anti-Catholic not only to conversion, but then to repentance and now to the seminary! I’m living proof of His humor, His mercy, and His love. I hope to help people as a priest by bringing them back to God to experience new life in Christ.
Please pray for me and for my fellow Labouré classmates on our vocation journeys. Feel free to reach out with any questions you might have at: StephenFerrazzano@rescuevocations.org.
Download a PDF of my story
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