Anthony Hopkins stars in a scene from the movie “The Rite.” (CNS photo/Warner Bros.)Between playing “cops and robbers,” a game of baseball, goofing around with friends, or in the silence of his bedroom, he felt it, or did he hear it? Like a quiet whisper, the voice of God drew the grade school boy near and seemed to ask, “Would you serve me?”
 
For a while, he thought about becoming a priest, but as a high school kid in the middle 1960s, the many Vatican II changes, as well as issues with leadership in his home parish, led Fr. Gary Thomas to follow in his father’s footsteps, the mortuary business.
 
“Things were in such turmoil in the church, and while I never lost my faith or stopped going to church, I put thoughts of the priesthood on the back burner,” said Fr. Thomas, 57. “I attended the University of San Francisco, and then went to embalmers or mortuary school after that, and served as a mortician for a few years – though I had helped my dad in the business since I was 14.”