Crimson and Gold Connection; Father Michael Simone

Welcome to Crimson and Gold Connection. My name is Dustin Tribor and today's guest is Father Michael Samone, who has been selected as one of this year's Pittsburgh State University outstanding alumni. Father Samone, thank you for coming in today. Thank you Dustin. It's great to be here. First of all, congratulations for being selected as an outstanding alumni. And tell us a little bit about yourself where you came from, what first led you to Pittsburgh State University and maybe some of your time here at Pitt State and then of course we'll go on to what you've been doing since Pitt State. Thank you Dustin. Dustin, I grew up in a town not too far from Pittsburgh. We're Kansas. My uncles had a little grocery store there. I'm for a number of years that are recently closed and my father was the postmaster in town and my mother always was a housekeeper or she did odd jobs in the area. Growing up, I worked for my uncles for over 10 years in that little grocery store starting out, side sweeping their parking lot and then moving inside to bagging groceries and selling some of their smoked meats that now are part of Southeast Kansas history. During my late high school years at Southeast rural high school and over in Cherokee, I started to think about what I want to do to do when I grew

up and what I thought about doing was taking over that small town grocery store and so I came to Pittsburgh State University thinking that I would major in business and the major that I selected while I was here was counting and so I used to took most of my classes over in the Kel school of business and spent a lot of time while I was here at the St. Pius the 10th Catholic Student Center which was known in those days as the St. Pius the 10th Newman Center but I was also pretty heavily involved in the development office here on campus and one of the most exciting things that I did and it was the last time I was in the studio I was doing an interview about six months that I had spent in Bangkok, Thailand as one of the first Pittsburgh State University students to travel abroad. Oh wow. Going back to the the Newman Center which is now the St. Pius the 10th Catholic Student Center I suppose you spent a lot of time there was that kind of a maybe where you started

thinking about maybe joining the seminary. Though I was lived with my folks at home while I was in college I know I spent two more than two-thirds of my time every day at the St. Pius the 10th Catholic Student Center and there was just a strong group of young people who were interested in their faith I'm at the center at the time. Now these days I'm a Catholic priest and so I remember it was my sophomore year in college I was having difficulty thinking whether or not I would stick out being an accounting major and I was walking on the sidewalk in front of the St. Pius the 10th Catholic Student Center with a friend. At that moment I looked over at my friend and frustration I said I can't figure out what to do with the rest of my life if I could put this choice in your hands what do you think I should do and my friend looked over me over at me and said it's not about what you should do it's who you should be and who you should become and I think you would make a great priest. From that moment forward you might think that well I just packed up my bags and

and left why I actually spent the next five years struggling with that question. Beyond a graduation here at Pittsburgh State University I worked for a local accounting firm Baird Kertzendobson for a couple of years before I then entered seminary for the next six years on the East Coast. So from Pittsburgh Kansas you went to the East Coast I had to be a big change for you. It was a big change it was the second time I had moved away from home the first time being when I was an international student here and I settled in Emmenceburg Maryland where the bishop of the diocese of Wichita at the time Bishop Eugene Gerber sent me to seminary to study philosophy and theology at a master's level. In 2003 then I returned to the diocese of Wichita to be ordained as a Catholic priest and since 2003 that's how I've been living my life in various roles within the diocese. I spent my first year or so working in a parish on the east side of Wichita St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church but within a year I was asked to go work more closely with the Bishop's

office while I was still continuing to be a parish priest. Soon after that our new Bishop Bishop Michael Jacobs asked me if I would consider going back to school once again and so he sent me to study spiritual theology in Rome for the next two years between the years of 2005 and in 2008. Upon my return from Rome I have spent the last nine years in my main role of recruiting and forming the next generation of Catholic priests for diocese. Now your predecessor actually talked to me about one time I'm Catholic and I was actually doing a retreat at the time. Many comes up to me and says Dustin I've heard that you thought about becoming a priest and like well I'm I've thought about I'm not so sure and I'm sure this is a conversation you have quite a bit. How do you go about finding those people those men that are interested in possibly becoming a priest? How do you find that out? Well there's really many ways and my predecessor was a very gifted man

and I mean I have different gifts than he did but I've really done a couple of things. My role really is focused on sharing the way of that God and I have chosen for me to live my life. So I get paid for talking to people about what the equivalent would be of someone getting paid to talk about a happy marriage because in the Catholic tradition being a priest is a vocation just like being a married person is a vocation and so my role in the diocese is to talk about something that I love very dearly just like a husband loves his wife very dearly and so within that context then what I do really is share a part of my life. Practically speaking though what we've done over the past nine years is really grow the vocations program through organization and so I have a team of priests that works alongside of me and we now have about 750 or 800 young

men between the ages of 18 and 25 that we track on an annual basis whether they're here at Pittsburgh State University or if life has taken them to some other place as well. Well Pittsburgh State University started off as a teaching college and it sounds like you've really passed on that tradition by doing what you do and encouraging these young men to find out their vocations. The gifts that were given to me well first of all it's such an honor to receive this award from my alma mater because what I found while I was here is that people had especially the faculty but also the staff and the leadership of the university had an ethic of being invested in the lives of their students and that model has served as a model for me as I try to form these young men and with the help of many others to become the next generation of priests for our diocese and so I'm ever grateful for that great gift that was instilled to me but I know that the roots of that gift started to

be planted while I was here at Pittsburgh State University. Father Simone thank you so much for coming in you've done an outstanding job that's why you haven't selected as one of the outstanding alumni at Pittsburgh State University congratulations on that and thank you again for coming in and talking to us from the Crimson and Gold connection.