Twenty years ago, on May 25, Bishop Paul Zipfel ordained six men to the priesthood. It was the largest group ever to be ordained together in the Bismarck Diocese in more than 50 years. (There would be another group of six men in 2013.) A unique feature these men share is that they all worked in different occupations before answering God’s call to the priesthood.
At the dawn of a new millennium, before a full cathedral and over 100 priests, Dan Berg of Max, Fred Harvey, Bismarck, Chris Kadrmas, Bowman, David Richter, Menoken, Frank Schuster, Bremen, and Terry Wipf, Minot, received the sacrament of holy orders.
Following a trend that many men were joining the seminary and becoming priests at a later age, all six had established careers. Three of them, Fathers Harvey, Kadrmas and Wifp have told their vocation stories previously in the Dakota Catholic Action feature titled “My Life Before the Priesthood.” Father Harvey, pastor at Christ the King in Mandan, had been a Deputy U.S. Marshall for eight and a half years. Father Kadrmas, in residence at Saint Anne’s in Bismarck, had worked as an occupational therapist. Father Terry Wipf, pastor at parishes in Parshall, Makoti and Plaza, was a band and choir teacher.
The remaining three, Fathers Richter, Berg, and Schuster, share their stories here.
Fr. Frank Schuster
Fr. Schuster often played “Mass” as a young boy growing up with four siblings in the Fargo Diocese, but by the end of high school, he ran from the priesthood. He planned to be a farmer/rancher, get married and have a family.
“But I made a deal with God—'If I can’t make it on the farm, I’ll come to work for you,’” Fr. Schuster explained. “Then I found the deepest, darkest closet in my mind and put it there, boarded it up and locked it away.”
While getting established in farming, Schuster worked as an auto mechanic and on-road crew for Wells County. From 1981-92, he struggled at farming, always feeling like success was just around the corner. “It was not a time to start farming with 18% interest rates and then a drought in the late eighties,” Fr. Schuster said. After he turned 30, with no wife on the horizon and the farm not doing well, Schuster began to re-evaluate. “I looked at the farm and didn’t see my dream anymore. I only saw work.”
One of his brothers expressed interest in buying the farm. Around that time, a neighbor suggested attending a vocations weekend at the Richardton Abbey for prayer and discernment. “Have you ever considered the priesthood?” the neighbor asked.
“No,” Schuster lied. He was still running, plus there was haying to do that weekend. But, it ended up raining so he went to Richardton after all. “Something came alive in my faith that I had never experienced before,” he said. “I became more aware than ever that I was a spiritual child.”
He returned home with an application for the seminary and decided to give it a try. “It was as if God picked me up and just put me in the seminary,” Fr. Schuster explained. “There had been a disconnect with God. I had pulled the plug intentionally. Now, I had started an intentional relationship with God. That’s what prayer is, more of a relationship of listening on our part.”
Parking his truck outside the Cardinal Muench Seminary (it closed in 2011), Schuster looked at the door. “Once you cross that threshold, there’s no denying the possibility that God is calling you,” he told himself.
It was not easy for him. At 32-years-old, Schuster worked to develop good study habits for the first time in his life. Ironically, women where he took classes at North Dakota State University (NDSU) were giving him their phone numbers. “But I always wanted the farm along with a wife and children, so in that sense, it was empty,” he said.
“Two things got me through,” he explained, “devotion to our Blessed Mother and time before the Blessed Sacrament. If we are trying to do God’s will, chances are there will be hurdles. The answer is prayer and self-reflection. St. Catherine of Sienna and all the mystics say if you want to know God, you need to know yourself and bring all that you are to him.”
Regardless of our vocation, Schuster said there will be challenges but the joys outweigh them. He noted that he loves celebrating the sacraments and has greatly appreciated the relationships and caring for his parishioners as a pastor for 18 years.
In early September, he returned to Rome (his studies were interrupted by COVID-19) to complete an advanced theological studies degree called Licentiate in Spirituality and perhaps another in Sacred Scripture.
Fr. Daniel Berg
As the only son with two younger sisters, Fr. Daniel Berg felt it was important to help his father on the family farm 12 miles outside of Garrison. He also worked full-time as an accountant/bookkeeper for Garrison Memorial Hospital. For the past nine years, he has been pastor of the tri-parishes of St. John the Baptist in Beach, St. Mary’s in Medora and St. Mary’s in Golva.
His story also includes running from God until the age of 32 when he entered the seminary, 10 years after graduating from college. Yet, Fr. Berg had first felt the call to the priesthood in grade school at Immaculate Conception in Max.
“I would play ‘Mass’ at home,” he said. “In second grade, the teacher asked us what we wanted to do when we grew up. I said a priest. As I got into high school, kids started calling me Fr. Berg.”
But, he felt they were teasing him, so the priesthood began to lose its allure. He also had mentors that discouraged the idea. Liking math, he decided to major in accounting. “Even in college, I still felt a sense of God calling me to something different,” he said, “but I stayed in accounting and took French to avoid having to take speech classes. It’s ironic that now I have to give homilies.”
After graduation, Fr. Berg enjoyed volunteering at church, altar-serving at Mass, and participating in the Knights of Columbus. A Benedictine sister at the hospital encouraged him to attend the same discernment weekend Fr. Schuster would be at.
“It was time to give it a try,” Fr. Berg said. His dad had begun renting out the farm which released him from that responsibility. “At Cardinal Muench, I had a sense that this was the right place. There were some challenges—philosophy was difficult, I had been an accounting major— but I had good spiritual directors.”
His ordination day was deeply emotional, feeling the Lord calling him to the awesome responsibility of the priesthood. He was especially touched at his first two Masses of thanksgiving— one at St. Nicholas in Garrison and the other at Immaculate Conception in Max—to see completely full churches.
Father David Richter
Although Father David Richter was open to the priesthood since his boyhood on a dairy farm in Menoken in a family with 14 children, he received a degree in industrial engineering from NDSU and did a six-month internship—just in case. A wife and family remained an option until shortly before he entered the seminary.
“My mom had three uncles that were priests and three aunts that were nuns and Dad had gone to the seminary and knew a lot of priests,” he said. “So, I thought of this as a possibility, just like becoming a fireman or farmer.”
In high school, he determined that whatever his life choice, he would first spend a year at the seminary to discern the possibility of the priesthood. While at NDSU as a junior, with his older brother Tom (Monsignor Thomas Richter) at Cardinal Muench, he entered the Vianney Discernment program (named for St. John Vianney) that allowed men to live at the seminary while not being enrolled. But, then he started dating a nice girl, exactly the kind he had in mind for marriage. She was the oldest girl of 13 children raised on a dairy farm.
“Now the two realities were side by side,” Fr. Richter said. “To make it more complicated, the Polaris Company in Roseville, Minn. accepted me for their first internship. It was from June until December of 1992.”
He completed his degree in the spring of 1994 and put out applications in industrial engineering. Nothing opened. It was time for his year in the seminary. “That’s when my mode of planning changed,” he explained. “Instead of trying to figure out how to get the answer from God that he didn’t want me as a priest, I started telling him, ‘God, tell me what you want.’ There was a sense that I could choose. Both doors were open. I prayed.”
In the meantime, he and his girlfriend broke up, she moved on and got engaged. Richter graduated from Cardinal Muench in 1996 and was sent to Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in St. Louis. “By the end of the first year, total clarity came,” he said. “I had to choose, but I felt it was where God wanted me to be.”
When his ex-girlfriend invited him to her wedding, Richter attended with his brother Mark. One of her sisters hit it off with Mark and they married a year-and-a-half later. “So, a sister of the girl I dated is now my sister-in-law,” he said with a laugh.
What Richter said he learned first-hand and what he advises others to do, is that rather than just praying, “Your will be done,” we should ask God, “What are you doing here? How do I enter into your will?”
“I believe we are living in a tremendously opportune time for this,” Fr. Richter said. “The Lord is providing a setting [with COVID], where we do not just do the same old, but we seek to find what God is asking us to do.”
Fr. Richter has been the pastor at St. John the Apostle in Minot for the last four years.
Three other priests celebrating their 20th anniversary this year are Fr. Stephen Folorunso, Fr. Todd Kreitinger, and Fr. Patrick Ojedeji. All three were ordained for other dioceses and were later incardinated to the Bismarck Diocese.