Former Columbia Editor Returns to Convention as Priest
Attending his first Supreme Convention as an ordained priest, Father Tim S. Hickey recalled his 25 years as an employee of the Knights of Columbus Supreme Council in New Haven, Conn. For many of those years, he was editor of Columbia magazine, covering numerous international conventions, and in San Antonio he is meeting state deputies and delegates who remember his journalistic work.
“They are very affirming and want to hear about my vocation and my first assignment as a priest,” Father Hickey said. “As Knights, they all supported me in one way or another” in hearing God’s call.
He also noted the influence of Venerable Father Michael McGivney, the Order’s founder.
“I give a lot of credit to the intervention of Father McGivney in guiding my vocation and discernment,” Father Hickey, age 52, said after concelebrating Sunday Mass and preaching the homily for early-arriving convention delegates.
Ordained in May by Archbishop Henry J. Mansell for the Hartford Archdiocese, Father Hickey noted that working for so many years “in a culture of vocations” at the Knights of Columbus headquarters was a positive experience in discerning his own call. He attended weekday Mass at St. Mary’s Church in New Haven, where the Order was founded, and belonged to Father McGivney Council 10705 there.
At the 131st Supreme Convention, Father Hickey is once again working for the Knights. He is serving as master of ceremonies for the three convention Masses, beginning with Tuesday morning’s Opening Mass, to be concelebrated by numerous cardinals, bishops and priests from all the countries where the Order operates. He said that it is an honor to see the convention from a different perspective as a priest and to serve the Knights of Columbus in a new way.