The Maryknoll community embraces three new deacons preparing for the priesthood.
In his message for World Mission Day last year, Pope Francis spoke of “hearts on fire, feet on the move.” For three Maryknoll seminarians ordained to the transitional diaconate in 2023, the road to ordination as Maryknoll missionary priests is, quite literally, a journey.
Joshua Maondo and Charles Ogony, from Kenya, and Matthew Sim, from Singapore, are making final preparations to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders on June 8. With hearts ablaze and their bags packed, the three will carry on anew Maryknoll’s mission to bring help and hope to the world’s most disadvantaged.
Following in Footsteps
For Joshua Maondo, 29, the path to priesthood was envisioned from a young age. Born in Kakamega, in western Kenya, Maondo says his faith was nurtured at home. “The Catholic faith came through my grandmother,” he says. “When she married my grandfather, she converted the whole family.”
When Maondo became an altar boy after his First Holy Communion, his grandmother could not have been prouder, he says. She encouraged her grandchildren to go to catechism classes and reviewed with them what they learned. Maondo would often discuss with her ways in which the Church’s teachings could be practiced within African culture.
Maondo first learned of Maryknoll missions as a student of linguistics and literature at Kenyatta University in 2012 from Father Lance Nadeau, then a chaplain at the university.
Although he had dreamed of becoming a priest since childhood, Maondo felt that the Maryknoll experience was unique: “You can easily single out [Maryknollers] from the rest of missioners. The way they handle people, with a lot of care, a lot of compassion — the way they move with the people.”
Joshua Maondo assists at a parish celebration at St. Basil Church in Chicago. (Courtesy of Joshua Maondo/U.S.)
He began his overseas training — a two-year-long experience of mission formation for Maryknoll priest and brother candidates — in Cochabamba, Bolivia, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. He says that despite the risk, he resolved to remain by remembering that he was following in the steps of early Maryknoll missioners.
In Cochabamba, Maondo participated in ministry to prisoners at the maximum-security prison El Abra. He also served as a tutor for children after school at Hogar San Martín-San Vicente, a home for at-risk children and youth.
“You can see hope in them,” Maondo says of the students he was tutoring then. “You look at their faces and you can see gratitude: ‘I’m glad I’m here … I look forward to a brighter future.’”
When Maondo returned to Chicago to continue his studies at Catholic Theological Union (CTU), he volunteered at the Aquinas Literacy Center to teach English to the immigrant community. He currently serves as a deacon at St. Basil Visitation Church and also assists at St. Benedict the African Church.
Maondo says the word “community” sums up his thoughts about mission. “Community lifts you up,” he says. “At the end of it all, it’s you in service to the community.” He wishes his grandmother, who passed away in 2016, could have seen him become a priest.
When talking about his own dreams for the future, Maondo says he wants to see “a blossoming Maryknoll.”
Charles Ogony helps with a reforestation project in Cochabamba, Bolivia. (Courtesy of Charles Ogony/Bolivia)
A Sign of Peace
Charles Ogony’s first steps in his vocation began in childhood, guided by his family in Migori, Kenya. His grandfather donated a plot of land for the construction of a small chapel and his father became a catechist. That was when, Ogony says, he began walking in the faith.
When Ogony was only 6 years old, he witnessed robbers violently attack his father as they attempted to steal from his home. The attack left a huge impression on him, yet instead of resorting to resentment, the young boy began considering what he could do to foster harmony among people.
“I saw priesthood being a sign of uniting people together,” he says. “If God calls me, I should respond so that I can be a sign of peace.”
Ogony also encountered Maryknoll in 2012 as a student of education, geography and history at Kenyatta University, where, he says, Father Nadeau’s homilies were exceptional: “He could make students from different churches, different religions, come to the Catholic Church.”
With Father Nadeau’s encouragement, Ogony met other Maryknollers. “We saw the same spirit of welcoming, of compassion,” he says. He remembers thinking that Maryknoll must be “special.”
Ogony began his overseas training in Bolivia in 2019. When the outbreak of COVID-19 prompted lockdowns and caused many international volunteers to flee the country, Ogony remained to help in any way he could.
Alongside fellow Seminarian Matthew Sim and Maryknoll Brother Ryan Thibert, Ogony volunteered at Hogar San José, a home run by the Little Sisters of the Abandoned Elderly for senior citizens at risk of homelessness. “Changing their clothes, serving them food, that was the mission,” he recalls.
On his own initiative, Ogony also began a ministry to accompany the homeless population of the city. Soon he became known as Hermano Carlos (Brother Charles) to the marginalized street people he befriended. Fresh from language school as a learner of Spanish, Ogony shared meals with them, singing and listening to their stories. “The way they received me was quite humbling. I fell in love with that ministry.”
Back in Chicago in 2021, Ogony continued his studies at CTU while he served at the Blessed Sacrament Youth Center, tutoring children from violent neighborhoods in an afterschool program. He also currently assists at St. Benedict the African Church.
Ogony, 30, is open to going wherever mission will take him: “Being a missioner is to go out and meet the marginalized and listen to their stories. That is the gospel we can write in their life — and they’ll also write the same in our life.”
Matthew Sim is shown with altar society members Carmen Muela and Iris Marquez at Cristo Rey Church in El Paso, Texas. (Deirdre Cornell/U.S.)
Joy in Sacrifice
Matthew Sim, 43, was born in Singapore — a vibrant Asian city-state of diverse faiths. Raised as a Buddhist, he graduated from Nanyang Technological University with a major in education in 2005.
Sim traveled to Hong Kong to teach math and science at Singapore International School in 2011. There, he met Maryknoll Fathers Michael Sloboda and John McAuley.
Inspired by their work, and deepening his faith as he prepared for the sacraments of Christian initiation, Sim began considering the path to priesthood. At times he thought, “Maybe I’m not worthy,” he recalls, “but if you hear carefully, in the homilies of the priests, in the people that surround you, they will tip you off, as if they’re the silent whispers of God.”
His discernment was strengthened by serving as an acolyte and Eucharistic minister at St. Anne’s Church in Stanley, Hong Kong.
Although usually supportive, his parents, who are Buddhist, raised objections upon learning more about the vows for priesthood. Sim says Fathers Sloboda and McAuley reassured him: “If God wants you to be a Maryknoll priest, it’ll happen.”
When his parents came to visit him in Hong Kong, Sim was pleasantly surprised to find his family wanted to understand more. They attended a Mass where he was serving and spoke to the Maryknoll priests.
For Sim, that encounter was “a God-given opportunity” for his family to understand his vocation. “I think [my father] saw the joy I had when serving at the altar. He said to the sacristan, ‘take a picture of me and my son.’ And that was the first time he acknowledged me as a Catholic.”
With his family’s blessing, Sim began his overseas training in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2019. When schools closed due to the pandemic, he saw that underprivileged children with no computer access were left unable to attend online classes.
Relying on his expertise and creativity as an educator, Sim began serving at Centro Nueva Vera Cruz as a tutor — even as he himself was a beginner learning Spanish.
“You might be entering a culture where you can’t speak your language,” he says. “You might be functioning at maybe 50% – 60%, but you have to remember: you’re 100% to those people.”
Sim finished his master of divinity degree at CTU in Chicago, and is now serving with Maryknoll Father Raymond Finch at Cristo Rey Church in El Paso, Texas. Last year, they celebrated the parish’s 50th anniversary with a trek up Mount Cristo Rey and a parish dance.
“Contemporary culture talks about sacrifice as if it’s something painful,” Sim says. “But if you go back to the Scriptures, when Christ made the sacrifice, he was filled by the Holy Spirit … this is the same experience as being a missioner.”
Featured image: (Left to right) Joshua Maondo, Matthew Sim and Charles Ogony are shown at their perpetual oath ceremony on June 3, 2023. The seminarians will be ordained as Maryknoll priests on June 8, 2024. (Michael Calvente/U.S.)
