(Nov. 6-12, 2022 marks National Vocation Awareness Week for the Catholic Church in the United States, a special time to promote and pray for vocations to the priesthood, diaconate and consecrated life. In this and two other articles, three new priests with Southern Maryland roots share their vocation stories.)
The trio of new priests celebrating a Mass together on that June evening at St. John Francis Regis Church in Hollywood, Maryland had a special bond. Not only had Father Kyle Vance, Father Alexander Wyvill and Father Ryan Braam been ordained together as priests for The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington two days earlier at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, but they were also friends and seminary classmates with shared Catholic roots in St. Mary’s County in Southern Maryland. Earlier, they had also served as counselors at St. John’s Summer Program.
That Mass of Thanksgiving marked a homecoming to St. John Francis Regis for all three priests, but it was even more so for Father Vance, who had grown up in the Hollywood parish and been mentored by the longtime pastor there, Father Raymond Schmidt.
Father Kyle Vance, who will be 29 on Nov. 19, is now serving in his first assignment, as a parochial vicar at Holy Redeemer Parish in Kensington. A native of California, he moved to California, Maryland, with his family when he was 3, and attended Hollywood Elementary School and Leonardtown High School before earning degrees in mathematics and physics at the University of Maryland at College Park.
After graduating from the university, he felt called to the priesthood and entered the archdiocese’s Saint John Paul II Seminary in Washington, where his fellow seminarians included his friends and fellow Southern Marylanders Alexander Wyvill and Ryan Braam.
“My first Catholic school was the seminary. It was fun to walk in my first Catholic class,” Father Vance said, remembering his classroom at The Catholic University of America that had a crucifix on the wall. “For me, it was a welcome transition to go into the seminary.”
At the seminary, he said it was a blessing to “enter this great fraternity of guys” devoted to their faith. His fellow seminarians included other men that he knew from the University of Maryland and from Southern Maryland. “It was great having that awesome Catholic fraternity around me,” he said.
During his studies at the University of Maryland, Kyle Vance had been geared toward a career involving math and physics. At the Catholic Student Center there, “I got into my faith on a deeper level,” he said, noting that he began attending daily Mass, received spiritual direction and was part of an active Catholic community there.
He added, “It was a relief to find out, through the Dominicans at the Catholic Student Center, that faith and science were compatible.”
After his first year there, he served as a counselor at the St. John’s Summer Program, which he said “deepened my faith a lot as well,” as the counselors and campers participated in Mass, Adoration, and other activities together. “It felt like a continuation of school, having a good Catholic community,” he said.
While a student at the University of Maryland, the future priest engaged in compelling scientific research, including one summer assisting with a project at Louisiana State University to create more precise laser lights for experiments that detect gravity waves, and the next summer at Maryland participating in physics research, doing data analysis for a dark matter group.
But he said that despite his studies and scientific work, something was missing in his life. He began discerning religious life and visited Dominican, Cistercian and Benedictine communities, and in his senior year he also considered doing FOCUS Catholic campus missionary work after graduation. And he was still considering going into a career involving math and physics.
Then he attended a vocations discernment weekend sponsored by the archdiocese. “I was just praying about it that last semester in college,” he said. “I wanted certainty with my mathematics background, but I entrusted myself to God’s providence to lead me to where He wanted me to be.”
Kyle Vance then felt called to enter the seminary, and he felt “at peace with that,” he said. Six years later, he was ordained as a priest for the archdiocese on June 18, 2022, alongside nine other young men, including his two friends from Southern Maryland.
The new priest was interviewed by the Catholic Standard in late August, on a week when he had just helped welcome students back to Holy Redeemer School in Kensington. In his first months of serving at that parish, he had already been busy celebrating Masses, hearing Confessions, doing a lot of Baptisms for families, and visiting nearby nursing homes. On his days off, he often gets together with priest friends whom he studied with in the seminary.
Asked about his new life as a priest, Father Vance said, “I like it a lot.” He added, “There’s a lot of learning on the job, too.”
He expressed gratitude toward his former pastor at St. John Francis Regis in his home parish in Hollywood, saying that Father Raymond Schmidt was there for him and very supportive as he felt called to the priesthood. “He’s been a great priestly witness,” said Father Vance.
Father Schmidt, who preached the homily at the new priest’s first Mass at St. John’s the day after his ordination, said in an interview that it has been very moving for him to watch Kyle Vance grow up and become a priest. “It feels like on some level, he’s a spiritual son, and now, a spiritual brother to me,” he said.
St. John’s pastor said he was also very happy when Father Vance was assigned to Holy Redeemer Parish, where he would serve with the pastor, Father Mark Hughes, who has been friends with Father Schmidt since they studied in the seminary together more than four decades ago.
When Father Vance knew that he would be ordained as a priest with his two friends and fellow Southern Marylanders, he helped organize the Mass of thanksgiving at his home parish. That evening, Father Vance, Father Wyvill and Father Braam celebrated a Mass together at the parish where they had been counselors in St. John’s Summer Program, and they got to pray with and express thanks to the Southern Maryland Catholics who had supported them along the way.
“It was really cool to be there with all of them and to have this Southern Maryland priestly brotherhood,” he said. “It worked out well. It was nice we were able to have individual first Masses, and have this event where everyone could come together.”
St. Mary’s County in Southern Maryland had been the place where in 1634, Jesuit Father Andrew White celebrated the first Catholic Mass in the English colonies, at St. Clement’s Island. This summer, three young priests from that region made some history of their own.
“There’s something special being from Southern Maryland,” Father Vance said. “It was great to have all three Southern Maryland guys ordained together. It was a big moment for the Southern Maryland community, too.”
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Formed in the faith in Southern Maryland, Father Ryan Braam serves there as a new priest
