A new generation of priests formed by Mary

After reaching rock bottom, Donald Calloway—now a Marian of the Immaculate Conception—had a profound conversion that changed his life dramatically.

"I had gone through all a boy could up to the age of 20," he says. "My mother had been married three times and we had no religion. The family was very hedonistic. There was a downward spiral in my life… I had no concern about anything or anybody, said Father Calloway, whose mother had a breakdown, ended up consulting a priest, and becoming a Catholic—something young Donald knew nothing about.

"Then one night in 1992 I knew that my life would radically change, that something was going to happen in my life," he told us. "I knew something was going to happen." For a while Donald remained in his room waiting for this unknown "something" to occur, then he went out into the hall looking for something to read and there a book caught his eye called The Queen of Peace Visits Medjugorje.

The book is about the apparition site in Bosnia-Hercegovina by Father Joseph A. Pelletier and Donald had no idea what the words meant. Looking at the pictures, he saw six children staring up into nothing. It was the seers during an apparition—something he had never even heard about. He read the caption and it said they were looking at the Virgin Mary. He was so poorly versed in religion that he didn't know who the Virgin Mary was. "I thought Jesus was like Santa Claus," he recalled. "I was a blank slate." Looking at more of the pictures, he saw other words like the Rosary, Communion, and the Eucharist that he also had little idea about.

Despite all this Catholic lingo, he began to avidly read it. He couldn't put it down… He was twenty years old and all he knew was that he was madly in love with God, Our Savior and the Blessed Mother… He lay on his bed for a long time and for the first time in years he felt free. An unbelievable peace came over him… Right on the verge of sleep, something came from behind him… his soul was leaving his body. He couldn't say anything and he couldn't move. The only person he knew to cry out to was Mary… All of a sudden he was pushed back into his body with the force of a universe coming crashing down upon him and he heard the most beautiful feminine voice he had ever heard and will ever hear say, “Donnie, I am so happy.” No one called him Donnie but his mother.

Instantly, Donald had lost his craving for all his vices—from impure thoughts about women to cigarettes. He had no more desire to do anything he had been doing before! "God had simply changed me, and it was unbelievable. Christ just overwhelmed me with His love. I started 'living' in the church, saying the Stations of the Cross until I was worn out, even slept in the pews. I began reciting the Rosary, wearing a scapular, reading everything I could about the saints,” he said.

Shortly afterwards, he joined the Marians of the Immaculate Conception and discerned a priestly vocation. Recently, he finally made it to Medjugorje. “At the seminary,” he said, “most of my peers had also been there… Our Lady is building up this army, this whole new generation, layer by layer. Rank by rank they are coming out of seminaries to take their places. There's a whole generation of priests coming, and they're just like me… We've been formed by the Blessed Virgin Mary and her apparitions.”

Our Lady of Peace, pray for priests and priestly vocations. 

Adapted from Medjugorje (Father Donald Calloway, MIC)