A Maryknoll priest brings his manifold God-given gifts to mission.

In school, asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, young Joe Everson drew a picture of a priest. In college, he envisioned a teaching career — and ended up becoming an attorney instead. These turns along the road were not errant delays, but part and parcel of his formation as a missioner.

The youngest of 10 siblings in San Francisco, Maryknoll Father Joseph Everson III, 63, remembers thumbing through the pages of Maryknoll magazine as a child, fascinated by the lives of missioners in faraway lands. “That was the type of life I wanted,” he recalls thinking.

During adolescence, the call to priesthood lingered in his mind. However, attending the University of California, Berkeley, he majored in history with the intention of becoming a teacher. During his last year there, Everson discovered another aptitude: law.

He graduated from Berkeley in 1984 and went on to earn a juris doctor from the University of Texas at Austin. Afterward, he began working as a corporate lawyer at a well-established firm in New York City.

“It was while I was working as a corporate attorney that I once again found God patiently waiting for me,” Father Everson reflected later. He reached out to Maryknoll to join the missionary society.

A few years later he found himself on the shores of Lake Titicaca in the Peruvian altiplano at an altitude of more than 12,000 feet in the cold, semi-arid region of Puno. He was in his Overseas Training Program, learning how to be a missioner from Maryknoll Father Edmund Cookson, who by then had worked for 30 years with the Indigenous Aymara people.

As a seminarian, Father Everson says, he felt welcomed by the local community in the Isthmus of Yunguyo. He led pastoral ministries for children and youth and became involved in parish activities for adults. He says “the Aymara people’s way of seeing faith as an intrinsic part of their everyday life” impressed him.

“I do once or twice remember thinking, ‘Why did I choose to do this?’ I had a comfortable life in New York City,” he says. “Those doubts were good because they required me to reflect, to be more intentional, and to seek strength in the values that had set me on this path.”

After two years in Peru, seminarian Everson returned to the States. He earned a master of divinity degree from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and was ordained as a Maryknoll priest in 1999.

The New York Times, reporting on Father Everson’s ordination, noted that “for him, the drastic change from corporate lawyer to missionary priest could not have felt more natural.”

Reassigned to Peru, the missioner was stationed in Tacna where he began a prison ministry in two correctional facilities in the city. He soon discovered that the inmates “were very needy in every sense of the word, spiritually needy, and grateful for the services.”

He also ministered in the prison of Challapalca, a maximum-security facility located more than 15,000 feet above sea level between Puno and Tacna. The administration allowed him to visit the prisoners, many of whom had not received a visit in years because of the prison’s remote location.

“I have found few things as life-giving as prison ministry,” Father Everson wrote at the time. There is “a very real conversion that goes on in the lives of many. For the first time many of the men and women are reflecting on their lives, on their character, and on God.”

In 2001, Father Everson was assigned to Cochabamba, Bolivia, where he was chaplain of San Antonio prison. He also served at a Fe y Alegría school, part of a Jesuit network that offers integral education to impoverished and vulnerable children in marginalized communities. Achieving his dream of teaching, he imparted religion classes to students and worked with their families.

“Some of them had been street kids,” he says. “The idea was to bring them into a special school to get them up to standards so they could then go into a regular school.”

Father Everson later served for three years at a parish in Ciudad Juárez, on the Mexico-U.S. border, before returning to the States for further studies. In 2010, he earned a licentiate in canon law from the Catholic University of America. He returned to Bolivia, this time to La Paz, to teach canon law at the diocesan seminary and to serve on the diocesan tribunal.

Canon law, the attorney says, has a spiritual element to it. “It’s based on the Church’s teaching and practice,” he says. “I see it as very pastoral — it’s there to help people in whatever situation.”

Elected in 2014 to the Maryknoll Society’s General Council as vicar general, Father Everson applied his expertise to the Society’s legal and administrative matters. As the COVID-19 pandemic spread, the General Council sought ways to protect and sustain its retired priests residing on the New York campus.

“We are a community,” Father Everson says. “You have to balance that with a sense of home and other spiritual needs that people have beyond their health.”

Maryknoll Father Raymond Finch, who was superior general at the time, says he is grateful for Father Everson’s support during those trying years. “He is always ready to respond to the needs of Maryknoll and the needs of evangelization,” Father Finch says. “He gives 100% to the people he is serving.”

In 2022, Father Everson was assigned to Hong Kong, where he now serves as assistant parish priest at St. Margaret’s Church and as canon lawyer for the judicial vicar of the Hong Kong diocese. Maryknoll Father Joyalito Tajonera, superior of the Asia region, says that Father Everson’s leadership “is a gift to mission, to the local church and to Maryknoll. We all seek his advice as a civil and canon lawyer.”

Father Everson also teaches two classes for adult faith formation and initiation into the Catholic Church, known as OCIA (formerly called RCIA), the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults.

“The way Father Joe structured our learning is that he encourages us to share our doubts and questions,” says a student. “The purpose is to let us understand the core value of being Catholics. It’s an ongoing spiritual journey.”

Encouraged by Father Everson, students share on their first day of class their motivations for seeking the faith. Some want to cope with loss and illness, while others want to share a closer connection to their Catholic relatives. Some are seeking truth and peace in tumultuous times and discovering the power of prayer. “Individual lives are touched,” Father Everson says.

“I am absolutely impressed by how many adults have become Catholics here in Hong Kong. We baptized about 150 at our 2024 Easter Vigil,” the missioner says.

Father Everson’s own journey to the priesthood mirrors his vision of how all-encompassing and enriching missionary work is. For him, it is about inclusivity. “Mission is about learning from the people, being willing to listen and learn,” he says. “It isn’t about leaving people behind but about creating a wider circle to include others.”

Featured Image: Maryknoll Father Joseph M. Everson, III celebrates Mass at St. Margaret’s Catholic Church, where he is assistant parish priest. (Paul Jeffrey/Hong Kong)