February 18, 2022

Father Douglas Hunter, Colts’ chaplain, is featured in Columbia magazine

Criterion staff report

Father Douglas HunterFrom the beginning of the National Football League season to its end, the media focuses on the players and coaches who do all they can to get their teams to the biggest stage—the Super Bowl. We congratulate the Los Angeles Rams for winning it all for the just completed 2021-22 campaign.

But there is more to a team than its players and coaches. Behind the scenes, chaplains also play an integral role.

In the January/February issue of Columbia—a magazine published 10 times a year by the Knights of Columbus—Father Douglas Hunter, chaplain of the Indianapolis Colts, is among a group of priests featured in a package titled: “Gridiron Fathers: Three NFL chaplains discuss their faith and ministry both on and off the football field.”

The pastor of St. Roch Parish in Indianapolis, Father Hunter writes about his experience of serving as chaplain of the Colts since 2017.

He calls his work there a “ministry of presence” and says the Colts’ general manager Chris Ballard, a Catholic himself, wants Father Hunter “to be present to the players as much as possible—on the practice field, off the practice field, on the gridiron on Sundays, and anywhere in between.”

To read the magazine’s package about the chaplains, including Father Hunter, go to cutt.ly/grid-ironfathers. †

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