Portrait of a Canadian Jesuit
How A Buddhist retreat led Fr. Ted Penton, SJ, to the Jesuits byr Katy Ramos-Borges
I
f you had met Fr. Ted Penton, SJ, just before the turn of the millennium and told him that he would be ordained a Jesuit priest in 2019, he wouldn’t have believed you. Indeed, Ted was an atheist when he decided to go on retreat at a Buddhist monastery in Thailand. The experience he had there changed everything. Fr. Ted is now a Jesuit priest and secretary of the Office of Justice and Ecology at the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States. In this interview, he talks about his spiritual awakening and journey and the connection he sees between faith and social justice work.
WHAT WAS YOUR CHILDHOOD LIKE? WERE YOU ALREADY INTERESTED IN THE WORLD OF RELIGION? I live in Washington, D.C., but I grew up in the suburbs of Ottawa with my parents and two younger sisters. My mother was Catholic, and my father converted when I was five or six. I was very devout as a child. When I was about eight years old, I wanted to be a priest. I liked to go to Mass, pray the rosary, and say my prayers. When I was about 10, I became less interested in that kind of thing, and by the time I was 12, I had completely lost interest.
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