“I think we’re poised for an amazing time in the Church.” An interview with Bp. Gerard W. Battersby
Bishop Gerard W. Battersby, 66, serves as the 11th Bishop of La Crosse, Wisconsin, and discussed his journey from a Detroit upbringing to the priesthood. He recalled a deeply Catholic childhood, active parish life, and the influence of his uncle, a priest, which shaped his vocation. Battersby entered seminary at 33 after managing his family's real estate appraisal business, highlighting the sense of a divine calling. He reflected on Detroit’s decline, noting job losses, industrial collapse, and social issues that contributed to the city’s reputation. The interview also touched on his pastoral experience in Detroit and his current role overseeing 135,000 Catholics in 19 counties.
about 2 months ago
The interview with Bishop Gerard W. Battersby, the eleventh bishop of the Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin, offers a portrait of his personal background, pastoral experience, and vision for the Church’s future, emphasizing renewed vocations, Catholic education, and a hopeful outlook for both his diocese and the broader Catholic community. 1
Bishop Battersby grew up in Detroit as one of nine children in a devout Catholic family, attending St. Benedict parish and its school. 1 He entered the seminary at age 33 after managing his father’s real‑estate appraisal business, being ordained a priest in 1998 and later serving as an auxiliary bishop for Detroit in 2016. 1
Battersby attributes Detroit’s negative reputation to the loss of 864,000 manufacturing jobs, the 1967 riots, and the rise of organized crime, while maintaining affection for the city’s people and its capacity for renewal. 1
He links the virtues required of a good father—presence, protection, teaching—to those needed in priestly ministry, stressing that a vocation is a divine listening rather than a personal choice. 1
The diocese has seen a rise from eight to seventeen seminarians, focusing on “quality over quantity” and encouraging holiness among priests as a model for discernment. 1
Approximately 80 % of diocesan evangelization funds are allocated to Catholic schools, reflecting a priority to strengthen Catholic identity in education. 1
Battersby warns that a loss of shared truth undermines societal foundations, criticizes the current immigration system as politically weaponized, and laments the “moral collapse” of the family unit. 1
He objected to the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision that weakened an 1849 anti‑abortion law, describing abortion as a grave evil with societal consequences. 1
He admires ordinary Catholics—family members, immigrants, and religious founders—who displayed quiet heroism. His spiritual program for laypeople emphasizes regular sacraments, devotion to the Eucharist, and seeking intercession from Mary and the saints. 1
Battersby concludes with optimism, believing the Church is poised for an “amazing time” as it moves beyond the “Old Age” and embraces a hopeful future rooted in holiness and missionary zeal. 1
Examine how late vocations influence contemporary Catholic pastoral renewal
Late vocations—especially priestly or consecrated vocations emerging after years of professional, family, or lay experience—can become a significant instrument of contemporary Catholic pastoral renewal. Their importance lies not simply in supplying additional clergy, but in enriching the Church’s understanding of vocation, strengthening intergenerational communion, and connecting parish ministry with the concrete realities of adult Christian life.
A late vocation should not be understood as a second-class or merely emergency vocation. The Church recognizes that God’s call can mature at different stages of life. Pastores dabo vobis speaks explicitly of “priestly vocations arising among people of adult age after some years of experience of lay life and professional involvement.” It describes this phenomenon as historically established but increasingly frequent in contemporary circumstances.
This perspective rests on a broader theology: every person has a vocation, and each vocation is unique, personal, and unrepeatable. The 1998 Congress on Vocations presents vocation as God’s particular plan for each person, expressed through the person’s identity, freedom, and concrete history. Thus, an adult vocation is not necessarily a delayed response to a call that should have been answered earlier. It may represent the way God’s providence has gradually prepared a person through work, relationships, suffering, service, and prior responsibilities.
The 2025 message for the World Day of Prayer for Vocations likewise emphasizes that vocations mature through “prayer, discernment and service,” and that people discover different forms of calling, including priesthood, consecrated life, marriage, professional service, and commitment to the common good.
One of the principal contributions of late vocations is the experience they bring from ordinary social and professional life. A person who has worked in education, medicine, business, public administration, agriculture, industry, or social services may enter formation with an informed understanding of the pressures faced by families, workers, migrants, young adults, and the elderly.
This experience can help pastoral ministry avoid abstraction. Adult candidates may be able to interpret the Gospel within the concrete conditions of contemporary society because they have already lived within those conditions. Their ministry can benefit from familiarity with workplace culture, economic insecurity, technological change, professional ambition, family responsibilities, and the search for meaning that characterizes many adults today.
This does not mean that younger candidates lack pastoral sensitivity. Rather, late vocations broaden the presbyterate’s range of experience. They can create a more comprehensive pastoral body in which different generations contribute different forms of wisdom, energy, and perspective.
Pastoral practice often gives considerable attention to children and youth while offering less systematic accompaniment to adults. Late vocations challenge this imbalance. They demonstrate that discernment does not end when a person leaves school or begins a career. Adults remain capable of conversion, radical generosity, and a new ecclesial mission.
The Congress on Vocations insists that vocational ministry must not be directed only toward young people. It should include parents, engaged couples, the sick, and the elderly, because vocation is a reality that extends across the whole of life. Late vocations therefore encourage parishes to develop adult catechesis, spiritual direction, retreats, faith-sharing groups, and vocational accompaniment appropriate to different stages of life.
In this sense, the late vocation is itself a pastoral proclamation: God’s call remains possible amid the responsibilities and wounds of adult life.
The existence of adult vocations requires a more discerning and personalized pastoral approach. It is insufficient to ask whether a diocese needs more priests. The decisive questions concern the authenticity, freedom, maturity, and ecclesial character of the vocation.
Pope John Paul II warned that concern about declining numbers must not eclipse “the authenticity of the vocations, the enthusiasm for following Christ and the ability to fulfil the tasks of the ministry.” This principle is particularly important for late vocations. An adult candidate may possess valuable experience, but experience alone does not establish a vocation. The Church must examine spiritual life, doctrinal understanding, psychological maturity, relational capacity, celibate commitment where applicable, moral integrity, and readiness for ecclesial service.
Late vocations can thus help dioceses move from a quantitative model—seeking candidates primarily to fill vacancies—to a qualitative and ecclesial model centered on genuine discipleship and pastoral suitability.
The Church’s formation system must be sufficiently flexible without compromising priestly or consecrated formation. Pastores dabo vobis states that it is not always possible, or even appropriate, to place adult candidates through exactly the same educational itinerary as younger seminarians. Instead, after careful discernment, dioceses should provide a specific formation program with suitable adaptations while ensuring the necessary spiritual and intellectual preparation.
Such adaptation may include:
Adaptation, however, must not become an exemption from essential formation. The Church specifically recommends relationships with other candidates and periods of residence in the major seminary so that adult candidates become fully integrated into one presbyterate and develop intimate communion with it. This guards against two opposite dangers: treating adults as if they were adolescents, or allowing them to remain isolated specialists whose previous identity prevents genuine ecclesial integration.
A diocese that welcomes late vocations must renew its understanding of the presbyterate as a communion rather than simply an administrative workforce. Adult candidates may enter with considerable independence, established habits, financial responsibilities, and professional authority. Formation must therefore help them receive priestly ministry as a sacramental and ecclesial vocation, not merely as a new occupation.
The Church’s vocational documents emphasize that the bishop and presbyterate are responsible for discerning and cultivating the gifts of the Spirit. The care of vocations belongs to the whole diocesan Church, not only to a vocation director or seminary staff. Adult vocations make this communal responsibility especially visible: the parish that knows the candidate, the spiritual director, the formation team, the bishop, and the presbyterate must cooperate in discernment.
They can also enrich the relationship between priests of different ages. Older priests may offer institutional memory, pastoral wisdom, and fidelity amid difficulty. Younger priests may bring energy and new approaches. Late vocations add another dimension: mature experience of lay life and work. When these forms of experience are integrated rather than competing, the presbyterate becomes a more credible sign of ecclesial communion.
Late vocations often embody the evangelical power of conversion. Their stories can show that Christian discipleship is not limited to those who made an early decision or followed a predictable religious path. A person who leaves a stable career, reorients personal plans, or gives up social security for the sake of the Gospel makes visible the radical nature of Christ’s call.
This witness can be particularly persuasive to adults who may feel that their lives are already fixed. It can communicate that vocation is not simply a youthful career choice but a response to Christ that may involve reinterpreting one’s entire history.
The 1998 Congress identifies hope as essential to vocation ministry and calls for its renewal in priests, educators, families, religious communities, and all those who serve younger generations. Late vocations can become signs of this hope because they demonstrate that the Holy Spirit continues to act beyond expected timelines.
Yet their witness must be presented carefully. It should not imply that everyone should abandon a previous vocation, career, marriage, or family responsibility. The Church teaches a diversity of vocations. The 1998 Congress stresses the need to welcome marriage, lay vocations, missionary vocations, religious life, secular institutes, and new forms of consecrated life together. The pastoral value of late vocations therefore lies not in glorifying one state of life over another, but in showing that God’s call can be discerned faithfully within the concrete circumstances of each person.
Late vocations can help correct a narrow understanding of vocation as a private project or personal achievement. Adults who have already experienced professional identity may be especially aware that priesthood or consecrated life is not self-promotion. The 2025 vocational message defines vocation as an impulse to love and service rather than a means of advancing oneself.
Their integration into parish life can also encourage collaboration between clergy and laity. Because many late vocations have previously served as lay leaders, catechists, volunteers, teachers, or professionals, they may understand more intuitively the importance of the lay vocation and the dignity of the baptized faithful. This can support a less clerical and more synodal pastoral culture in which the ordained ministry serves the whole ecclesial communion rather than absorbing or replacing the apostolate of the laity.
At the same time, the Church must preserve the distinctiveness of ordained ministry. Lay vocations cannot simply substitute for priests where the Eucharist and sacramental ministry require ordained ministers. John Paul II explicitly warned that indispensable lay vocations do not eliminate the need for priestly and consecrated vocations. Late vocations can strengthen collaboration, but they do not dissolve the theological distinction between the common priesthood of the baptized and the ministerial priesthood.
Late vocations also present real pastoral challenges.
For these reasons, the Church’s insistence on careful discernment and adapted but serious formation is decisive. The goal is not rapid recruitment but the formation of ministers capable of stable, faithful, and fruitful service.
Late vocations influence renewal most fruitfully when they are incorporated into a broader vocational culture. The Congress calls vocation the “beating heart” of the whole pastoral enterprise: pastoral work should lead people toward a concrete Christian life-project, while vocational ministry should remain connected to family life, liturgy, catechesis, social solidarity, and Christian formation.
This implies several practical priorities:
Make vocation part of ordinary parish life. Vocation should be preached and discussed not only during special campaigns but within sacramental preparation, catechesis, family ministry, and adult formation.
Develop adult discernment ministries. Parishes and dioceses should provide retreats, spiritual direction, inquiry groups, and accompaniment for adults who are considering priesthood or consecrated life.
Train vocation ministers and formators. The Congress identifies formation personnel as a central and strategic element of contemporary vocation ministry.
Strengthen prayer and communal responsibility. John Paul II calls prayer the foremost action of vocation ministry and emphasizes the value of involving the entire Christian community.
Present all vocations together. Priesthood, consecrated life, marriage, and lay mission should be proposed as complementary forms of Christian discipleship, not as rival options.
Prioritize credible witness. Happy, faithful, and pastorally generous priests and consecrated persons remain among the most effective signs encouraging vocational discernment.
Late vocations contribute to pastoral renewal by bringing adult wisdom into ministry, reconnecting the Church with the realities of professional and family life, and challenging the assumption that vocation belongs only to the young. They invite dioceses to practice more careful discernment, more flexible formation, stronger intergenerational communion, and more intentional adult pastoral care.
Their deepest significance, however, is theological: they witness that God’s call is free, personal, and capable of unfolding throughout the whole of life. When received with prudence and formed within ecclesial communion, late vocations do not merely address a shortage of priests or religious. They help the Church become more attentive to the Spirit’s diverse gifts and more faithful to her mission of forming every baptized person for holiness and service.