If you had met Fr. Ted Penton, SJ, right before turn of the millennium and told him he’d be ordained a Jesuit priest in 2019, he wouldn’t have believed you.

Ted was an atheist when he decided to go on a retreat at a Buddhist monastery in Thailand while traveling after college. His experience there changed everything, and led him on a path back to the Catholic Church, the spiritual home of his childhood.

Fr. Ted is one of the newest Jesuit priests in the world. He ordination was just a few weeks ago in Toronto, one of the 22 Jesuits set to be ordained to the priesthood this year. In this conversation with host Mike Jordan Laskey, Ted opens up about his faith journey, his ordination, and how he went about writing the homily for his first Mass as the presider when the Gospel for the day wasn’t his all-time favorite passage.