2026 United Catholic Appeal
Father John McCaslin embraces an ‘amazingly joyful’ vocation as a priest
Father John McCaslin, pastor of St. Monica Parish in Indianapolis, shows a business card with the archdiocesan vocations director’s contact information he received 30 years ago that was a pivotal moment in his discernment of his vocation to the priesthood. He’s kept the business card as a “sign of God’s faithfulness to me.” (Photo courtesy of Cantaloupe)
By Sean Gallagher
Thoughts about being a priest kept coming to Father John McCaslin 30 years ago when he was a young adult working for what is now Roche Diagnostics in Indianapolis.
While he had thought about the priesthood when he was a child growing up in St. Simon the Apostle Parish in Indianapolis, those thoughts had faded but never totally went away as a high school student and then in college.
As Father McCaslin got involved in St. Simon as a young adult, he said that thoughts about the priesthood “came back pretty hard and pretty strong.”
That led him eventually to speak about his vocation with the late Father Noah Casey during the sacrament of penance.
Father Casey took out a business card and wrote on it the name and phone number of the archdiocesan vocations director at the time.
“He said I owed it to myself and to the Church to look at that and explore it,” recalled Father McCaslin, now pastor of St. Monica Parish in Indianapolis.
He put that card in his wallet. And there it remained for a couple of years before he finally called the number written on it. In a visit to Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology in St. Meinrad, he learned that a man becoming a seminarian didn’t have to know at the start if he was meant to be a priest.
“There’s freedom there,” Father McCaslin said in an interview reflecting on the start of his journey into priestly formation. “That gave me the freedom to go [to seminary]. And so, I went.”
Father McCaslin’s journey from discernment through five years of priestly formation to ordination in 2002 was supported through the generous giving of Catholics across central and southern Indiana to the United Catholic Appeal (UCA).
Just as it did when Father McCaslin was in seminary 25 years ago, the UCA continues today to support the freedom of the archdiocese’s potential future priests as they discern God’s call in their lives and prepare for ordained ministry.
‘What heaven’s going to look like’
When Father McCaslin drove along the winding roads of southern Indiana to arrive for the first time at Saint Meinrad as a seminarian, he could not have imagined the twists and turns of the journey of priestly formation he was beginning to take.
It was a road that took him far from his home in Indiana to Antigua, Guatemala, in the spring of 2001, where he spent several months learning Spanish in an immersion program there, a time he described as his “most transformative semester” in seminary.
Father McCaslin traced his interest in learning Spanish to seeing a growing number of Spanish-language businesses in Indianapolis in the 1990s. He then wondered if there might be a need to celebrate Mass in Spanish.
“That was really the scope of my thinking,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking that, once you offered Mass in Spanish, you have to offer everything.”
That knowledge came later in priestly formation and especially in serving as pastor of parishes with large Hispanic communities.
One of the largest parishes in the archdiocese, St. Monica boasts more than 2,000 households. Its members speak English, Spanish, French, Haitian Creole and other languages.
“This is what heaven’s going to look like,” Father McCaslin said. “It’s really just beautiful. It’s breathtaking. Every time I celebrate Mass, it just takes my breath away to look out and see the people of God worship. It’s like the mosaic of humanity.”
That mosaic continues to grow larger and larger at the Indianapolis West Deanery faith community. Dozens of new Catholics are received into the Church each year at its celebration of the Easter Vigil that goes well into the night.
“What I love about it is that nobody cares about time when you go to the Easter Vigil [at St. Monica],” he said with a laugh.
In leading a large parish of Catholics from many cultures, Father McCaslin appreciates the support given to the archdiocesan Office of Intercultural Ministry through the UCA.
“I desire to empower the baptized to do the mission,” he said. “And a big part of supporting the archdiocese is so that [it] can empower the parishes to do what they’re supposed to do, which is to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to the best of their ability in their particular geographical region.”
Other archdiocesan offices supported by the UCA, such as the Office of Evangelization, the Office of Catechesis, the Office of Youth Ministry and the Office of Young Adult and College Campus Ministry, help parishes form lay Catholics to carry out the Church’s mission of evangelization in their own lives.
“I’m a big believer that the mission of the Church is carried out mostly by the baptized,” Father McCaslin said. “So, my role is to form, encourage and send forth the baptized to transform the world. I come in contact with my parishioners. They come in contact with tens of thousands of people in any given week.
“Nothing gives [me] more joy than to watch my parishioners get so excited and enthused about carrying on ministry. It fills my heart. That’s how you see the multiplication of the loaves.”
‘Amazingly joyful’
In addition to being formed for ordained ministry at Saint Meinrad, Father McCaslin benefitted by building relationships with three generations of priests soon after he was ordained in 2002.
He was assigned as associate pastor of St. Barnabas Parish in Indianapolis, serving under its pastor at the time, Father James Farrell, who was ordained in 1975. Two of St. Barnabas’ retired pastors, Father Joseph McNally, ordained in 1958, and its founding pastor, Father John Sciarra, ordained in 1945, were often present in the faith community.
“I could not have asked for a better beginning to priesthood,” Father McCaslin said. “I received a great gift in that.”
He is grateful for the way that many retired archdiocesan priests continue to serve Catholics across central and southern Indiana. Those Catholics in turn support the care of retired priests through their contribution to the UCA, something that Father McCaslin appreciates.
These retired priests, he said, “stayed faithful to their promises and stayed faithful to the people of God. They served the Church and helped it weather some challenging years. Now that they’re retired, I think it’s right and good that we should want to pour out love and support upon them.”
And his journey to sharing priestly life and ministry with generations of priests, all of whom have given their lives to building up the faith of Catholics across the archdiocese, started some 30 years ago when Father Casey gave him that business card with the name and phone number of the archdiocesan vocations director.
That business card remains in Father McCaslin’s wallet to this day. He’s even had it laminated to preserve it.
“There’s a sentimentality about it,” he said. “But I also think it’s symbolic of God’s faithfulness to me and that I don’t have to know everything to say ‘yes.’ I don’t have to understand all of the mystery to walk into it. Maybe it’s a symbol of the ongoing trust that I’ve had in all of my ministry.
“I presume that if [the card] lasts, then it’ll be buried with me.”
If it does last, then it will also become a symbol of the joy that Father McCaslin has found in giving himself to priestly life and ministry in the archdiocese.
“Priesthood has been so joyful for me, so amazingly joyful,” he said. “It’s been beautiful. It’s been a wonderful call and vocation.”
(For more information about a vocation to the priesthood in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, visit HearGodsCall.com. For more information about the United Catholic Appeal, visit www.UnitedCatholicAppeal.org.) †
Related: See more stories from our special section highlighting ministries supported by United Catholic Appeal
