Father Joshua Rodrigue: 'God will provide'

By PETER FINNEY JR.
Clarion Herald

Father Joshua Rodrigue, who will become the new rector-president of Notre Dame Seminary in July 2022, was a young seminarian in 2001 when he visited Msgr. Stanislaus Manikowski, an old friend living in retirement at St. Joseph Manor in Thibodaux.

The purpose of his visit was to ask for Msgr. Manikowski’s priestly advice just before returning to the Pontifical North American College (the NAC) in Rome for his ordination as a transitional deacon for the Houma-Thibodaux Diocese.

Msgr. Manikowski, a Polish priest, had survived nearly six years of imprisonment in three Nazi concentration camps during WWII, including the death camp at Dachau, from which he was liberated by U.S. troops in 1945.

Msgr. Manikowski immigrated to the U.S. in 1951 and wound up serving many years at parishes in the dioceses of Baton Rouge, Lafayette and Houma-Thibodaux and the Archdiocese of New Orleans, always thankful for his hard-won freedom and survival.

“He had known me since I was in the second grade as an altar server,” Father Rodrigue said. “I asked him, ‘Monsignor, do you have any words of advice to give to someone getting ready to be ordained?’ And, he said, ‘Yes, I’m glad you asked me that! God will provide. It doesn’t matter how hopeless the situation is, God will always provide. No matter how dark the night is, at some point, the sun has to rise. God will always provide.’”

“I think those words were what kept him going when he was in the concentration camp,” Father Rodrigue said.

Father Rodrigue, 44, currently the director of spiritual formation at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, was named Oct. 14 by Archbishop Gregory Aymond to succeed Father James Wehner as rector-president of Notre Dame Seminary on July 1, 2022. 

“Father Rodrigue comes to us eminently qualified and with much experience in priestly formation,” Archbishop Aymond said.

Father Wehner, a priest of the Pittsburgh Diocese, has served for 10 years as rector, overseeing a formation program that has catapulted Notre Dame Seminary into the second-largest theologate in the country. He will remain in New Orleans through the end of July 2022 as part of the transition.

Asked to identify the biggest joy of his tenure, Father Wehner said it was the quality of seminarians who have gone on to ordination.
“It’s the seminarians, the quality of the men we’re seeing and the commitment they have to the faith, to the church, to discipleship,” Father Wehner said. “There’s an openness to formation that seminarians have today that, frankly, I’m not so sure I saw in myself in the time frame when I was in the seminary. These guys want to be holy, they want to be saints and they love the church.”

Father Rodrigue, who grew up as a parishioner at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Thibodaux, attended E.D. White Catholic High School and then St. Joseph Seminary College (St. Ben’s) in Covington. His seminary education took place at the NAC in Rome, and he was ordained to the priesthood on Aug. 10, 2002.

Following his ordination, he returned to Rome to complete his licentiate in sacred theology and then came back to Louisiana, where he served as parochial vicar at Holy Cross Church in Morgan City before being named pastor of St. Anthony of Padua Church in Bayou Black and then rector of St. Francis de Sales Cathedral in Houma.

In addition to his parish duties, he served as an adjunct professor of theology at St. Ben’s from 2006-17 and at Notre Dame Seminary from 2008-09.

In 2017, he was asked by the NAC to return to Rome to serve as director of pastoral formation and later as director of spiritual formation. It was the second time his alma mater had asked him to serve on the faculty; the first time, then-Bishop Sam Jacobs felt there were too many pastoral needs in the Houma-Thibodaux Diocese to release him for service in Rome.

Father Rodrigue said Bishop Shelton Fabre let him make the decision of whether or not to go in 2017.


“He told me, ‘They’re asking for you again,’” Father Rodrigue said, smiling. “So, I took it to prayer, and I talked things over with my dad. Dad’s got some good advice. He said, ‘They asked you once; they asked you twice; they’re not going to ask you a third time.’ I was thinking about my family and their health. I had a grandmother who was in her upper 90s. She’s still living. She’s going to be 100 this year. She wasn’t too happy about me going overseas, but she’ll be happy now.”

In Rome, Father Rodrigue also taught for the last five years at the Pontifical Gregorian University (2017-18) and at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, beginning in 2018.



His Roman experience has given him a broader understanding of the universal church and also allowed him to be more intentional about relying on God’s grace in his life.

“It certainly gave me a lot more patience with people who were having to try to figure out my English,” Father Rodrigue said. “Before, I was the rector of the cathedral and I did all kinds of things. When I got there as a faculty member, I was no longer making my own schedule and I felt so incompetent. It was almost  a desert experience in that all your support systems that you have are taken away, and you truly have to rely on the Lord and on God’s providence in everything.

“Sometimes you have to remind the Lord, ‘Look, I’m doing this for you!’ Usually, when I did that, he helped out. I think it was just me remembering that I need to turn to the Lord.”

Around almost every corner in Rome, there is another church with another amazing story to tell.

“You really grow in devotion to the saints,” Father Rodrigue said. “You know, on feast days you just show up to the church where the saint’s remains are. That’s really instilled in me a great devotion to the saints. It reminds me that the people who walk the streets are saints and sinners alike.”

One of the classes Father Rodrigue taught was in sacred architecture. With so much art from which to choose, Father Rodrigue has two favorites as part of his Roman studies.

One is “The Calling of Saint Matthew,” a 1600 painting by Caravaggio that portrays the moment at which Jesus inspires Matthew to follow him. It resides in the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi Church.

“It’s all about his calling, the inspiration and then the martyrdom,” he said.

The other painting resides in the Vatican Museum – “The Martyrs of Gorkum” – a painting by Cesare Fracassini that depicts a group of 19 Dutch Catholic clerics, secular and religious who were hanged in 1572 in the town of Brielle by militant Dutch Calvinists.

“It’s one that probably people would just pass by,” Father Rodrigue said. “It’s just that simple resignation, that looking up. His eyes captured that reliance on God with everything. In the midst of death hanging all around him and people yelling at him, he’s at peace and resigned to the Lord. That’s something I’ve carried with me. Just rely on the Lord, and he is going to take you wherever.”

Father Rodrigue said he has been impressed with Archbishop Aymond’s commitment to superior priestly formation, which has shown itself in the seminary faculty and in a polished physical plant.

“Why create new things when you can just build on what’s there,” Father Rodrigue said. “I don’t know everything, and I don’t mind relying on others. In my opinion, Father Wehner has made Notre Dame a flagship seminary, a true model seminary. Is it perfect? No place is going to be a perfect place, because all of us are imperfect people. But it’s pretty, pretty close.”

Father Rodrigue addressed the seminarians as a group before Mass in the seminary chapel on Oct. 15.

“I love the priesthood,” he told them. “I've loved it for the past 20 years. I hope that my ministry here at Notre Dame will help to form men to be compassionate, loving priests who have great zeal for the salvation of souls, who are willing to lay down their lives for the flock.

“Priesthood is an exciting adventure. Priesthood is like riding a tandem bicycle. The Lord gets in the front seat and he says, ‘Just hop on the back and trust me.’ He says, ‘Just keep pedaling. I'll take you on a ride that you'll never forget. And I think you might like where you end up at the end.’

“The Lord has been really good to me, and I don't know what's on the road ahead of us all, but I trust I trust him and I trust in one thing: God will provide. Deus Providebit.”

(Peter Finney Jr. is the executive editor and general manager of the Clarion Herald, the Official Newspaper of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.)