Salvador Den D. Hallegado, 38

First assignment: St. John the Evangelist, Streamwood

Education: Bitoon Elementary School, Capiz High School, West Visayas State University and the University of Iloilo, all in the Philippines; Pontifica Universita Urbaniana, Rome; Pontifia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia

Parents: the late Rosa De Los Santos and Salvador Hallegado

First Mass: 3 p.m. May 19 at Our Lady of Ransom, Niles

When Salvador Hallegado first felt called to the priesthood, he was in high school—as a teacher, with plans to finish a law degree and work as an attorney. One day, travelling home from school in a jitney with a Dominican nun who was a friend of his aunt, Hallegado told her that he was having second thoughts about pursuing a law career. He felt called to become a priest, he said.

Three days later, he met the superior general from a religious community in Rome. In short order, Hallegado made arrangements to study philosophy at the community’s seminary in Rome when his law degree was finished. But Hallegado soon decided that the religious community wasn’t for him, so he began studying theology with the Basilian Fathers in Colombia. Still, Hallegado said, the “rigidity” of religious life bothered him.

“I am a very sociable person, and I like to meet people and pursue so many initiatives,” he said. “With religious communities, you are more limited to their charism.”

A Basilian father suggested that Hallegado’s vocation to the priesthood could be put to good use in the United States, so he came to join his sister in Chicago and began working with Father Thomas McQuaid to discern his vocation.

Now that he is to be ordained, Hallegado wants to focus on ministry as “accompanying people on their journeys.”

That could be more difficult in the current climate, he said, but the scandals have forced seminarians to look their commitment to celibacy honestly.

“There are always struggles, but there are always hopes,” he said. “This kind of struggle is a way of purifying your commitment to the priesthood.”

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