MISSION—The New Year brought with it a new priest for Westminster Abbey. Father Leo Barker, OSB, was ordained at the monastery Jan. 6 by Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB.
“I was nervous and excited about ordination, since it brings about such an immense change, a deeper configuration to Jesus Christ,” he said after the ceremony.
Born Micah Emmanuel Barker, he said he felt the calling when he was 7 or 8 years old. He entered minor seminary in 1999 at the age of 15.
“The priesthood is not the first commitment that the Lord has led me to; rather the great grace of being called to the monastic life has shaped my life over the past decade,” Father Barker said.
His parents, Dale and Susan Barker, said he told them he wanted to be a “priest and a teacher” when he was in Grade 3. “We were teachers ourselves.”
Father Barker has spent 15 years at the seminary and monastery; 10 of those have been in preparation for the priesthood. Fellow monks know him as the Master of Ceremonies, the monastery’s librarian, and a lover of research and the liturgy.
“He has a very good, logical, meticulous mind,” said Abbot John Braganza, OSB, at a reception after the ordination Mass. “He’s a person who reads and absorbs, and that’s how he tackles a problem. He has to work it through.”
The abbot said Father Barker has been the Master of Ceremonies at the monastery for seven or eight years. “He’s got a very good liturgical sense.”
Etienne O’Toole, who during five years he spent at the abbey was a confrere of Father Barker, called the newly ordained priest a “liturgy guru.”
He added he was impressed with Father Barker’s “encyclopedic memory” and extensive knowledge when it comes to the Church and faith. “Sometimes I joke to him that he could write a book on Catholic religious orders just from memory,” he said.
“His job as librarian seems to really fit his personality, his love for knowledge, and his desire to read books.”
Father Barker cited Scripture as his favourite book and “the nourishing Word for a monk, and hopefully for any Christian.”
He listed some of his favourite spiritual authors: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Msgr. Luigi Giussani, and Jean Pierre de Caussade. When it comes to fiction, he enjoys books by Dostoevsky, and C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces and That Hideous Strength.
Father Barker’s personality is more outgoing than you might expect from a monastic librarian, O’Toole remarked. “He is probably more sociable than the average monk. He seems to really get along with all the seminarians, and seems to know a lot of people in the community.”
After his ordination to the diaconate in 2012, Father Barker spent a summer serving at Immaculate Conception Parish in Delta under Father Patrick Tepoorten. He has also taught Latin, math, religion, and English for two years at the minor seminary.
Father Barker and Deacon Caesarius Marple, who was ordained at the abbey in September, are currently studying for teaching certification at Trinity Western University.
“I am a Benedictine monk of Westminster Abbey, so my priesthood will be shaped by that reality,” he said. “Traditionally, teaching and forming the seminarians is our work.”
Archbishop Miller encouraged Father Barker to attract people to Jesus Christ through his service as a Benedictine monk and priest.
“The secret of a priest’s making his preaching convincing is his passionate love for the Lord,” he said in his homily. “Through your study, prayer, and work, you must come to understand how the human heart is restless for God.”
