Give Us Shepherds

Fr. Carlos Londoño is in his third year as one of the three associate pastors for the Family of Five Parishes on Milwaukee’s East Side and downtown. Ordained in 2020, Fr. Londoño came to the United States from his native Colombia in the summer of 2014.

  • He spent two weeks at a public university in Colombia studying chemical engineering before he found out he had been accepted to Saint Francis de Sales Seminary, St. Francis. He left that college the next day.
  • Londoño completed his undergraduate studies at Cardinal Stritch University in 2016, while also studying at the seminary and brushing up on his English.

You were part of the ordination Class of 2020. Can you describe what those spring months during COVID-19 were like at the seminary?

We were together for those spring months until a month after ordination. For those months, we had guys who cooked for the whole community, we had to take care of all the things we would normally have a staff member do. We had the gift of having Mass every day still, and we knew it was a gift in the sense that a lot of parishes didn’t have that. We had a full Holy Week, so that was part of the blessings. It was definitely a different time.

How dd you end up at a seminary in Milwaukee?

I had this desire to become a missionary priest, and I went to one of my associate pastors at my home parish (Santa Ana in Sabaneta, Colombia) and I told him about it. He said, “Oh, I have a priest friend in Milwaukee.” Two things came together that were very important to me. His answer was an answer to my missionary desires but also to my attraction for the American culture. I had some distant family living in the States, and I always grew up hearing about (the United States). You also learn about it through movies, and for some reason, I liked it.

When was the first time being a priest felt real to you?

I think it happened pretty early on. My family couldn’t be here for my ordination because the borders in Colombia were shut down. They watched the ordination online. I drove with one of my classmates to the Cathedral for ordination and on our way back, he was driving, and I made a video call to my parents and family. My parents called me “Father” and asked for my blessing. It hit me an hour or two after I left the Cathedral that I have become a priest when my parents called me “Father” for the first time.

Was that a touching moment for you?

It was a very moving moment. Just seeing them come together to join me from the distance was very moving.

You said you were attracted to the American culture. You’ve been here 10 years now. Is it what you expected?

If anything, I have come to learn more about it as I have lived in it. The U.S. is a very big country, and it has different subcultures within the same country, and I have come to appreciate the Midwest a lot, especially it being so faith and family oriented. Holidays — Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter — also summer celebrations, are always an occasion to get together with your family, and I find that to be very special. Also, the faith traditions here in the Midwest, we look at Milwaukee and we have the gift of so many churches, especially Catholic. You can tell it has been heavily influenced by religious values.

What is your favorite part of being a priest?

I think the priesthood is having the chance to look at humanity the way God looks at it. I think of humanity as a big painting, and of course, we are part of the painting, but God has the ability to look at it from the outside and marvel at its beauty. He can see the gray areas, the dark areas, the bright areas and how they all come together to make such a beautiful picture, and I think of the priesthood as having the chance to look at that same picture that God sees that is humanity and just seeing how beautiful it is.

How does that manifest itself in your priesthood?

Every time you hear a confession, every time you anoint someone, every time you celebrate a wedding and prepare the couple for marriage, you get a glimpse of that picture, and you start connecting the dots and it starts making sense to you. The fullness of it starts becoming visible to you, and you can only marvel and appreciate it and have a little taste of how God loves it.