Rev. Mr. Daniel Duplantis

In spite of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. Military Catholics have cause for celebration this year. Seventeen young men who are on track to become military chaplains will be ordained. That’s the largest class of chaplain candidates in recent memory. Eight will be ordained priests and nine, transitional deacons in preparation for priestly ordination next year. The bumper harvest promises some relief to a desperate shortage of priests on active duty. The Reverend Mr. Daniel Duplantis, 2d Lt, USAFR, a prospective Air Force chaplain, will be ordained a priest on June 6 in New Orleans. In this edition of Catholic Military Life, the only official podcast of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA (AMS), the soon-to-be Father Duplantis shares how he discerned a vocation, the ways he hopes to provide pastoral care for Airmen and their families, and what life is like in his final year of formation at Notre Dame Seminary in “the city that care forgot.”