Bishop Robert Barron first floated this idea three years ago:
“One of my dreams is to establish an order of priests,” Barron told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview. “Go back to the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Jesuits. They all responded to a need of their time — what they perceived to be this pressing spiritual need.”
Barron, of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, 62, is the most widely-followed online Catholic cleric in the country, aside from Pope Francis himself.
“We have mostly lay people. It’s a mostly online presence, but we want to set this thing up institutionally and establish Word on Fire centers in all the major cities,” Barron said. The centers “would be centers of evangelization, of instruction, of liturgy — that would then influence the wider culture.”
Recently, to mark the apostolate’s 25th anniversary, Word on Fire issued this statement, as part of a pitch to raise funds for several evangelization projects:
We are thrilled to announce that Bishop Barron seeks to establish a Word on Fire order of priests to continue his work long into the future and ensure the ongoing effectiveness and expansion of Word on Fire’s evangelization efforts.
The goal is to initially recruit three to five priests and three to five novices for the order, living according to a rule that Bishop Barron has already developed.
Through a generous donor, Word on Fire secured a home in Rochester, Minnesota, where the priests can begin living in community according to the rule and receive advanced formation to learn to evangelize within the Word on Fire ethos.
Recruitment of priests will begin shortly, but your generosity is needed to fund the costs associated with living expenses, formation and education, and ultimately sending these priests out on a mission of evangelization.
We pray that this order will exist in perpetuity, leading the way in evangelization and drawing people into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ.
There’s a lot that’s unknown about this project — which is still, for the most part, still mostly an idea. It’s unclear how this new order plans, in Bishop Barron’s words, to “respond to the needs of [the] time.”
But a couple things are worth noting.
First, there is already a prominent order of religious devoted to the charism of evangelization and communications, The Paulists. Paulist Press has been a prominent presence in Catholic publishing for decades. Their online ministry, “Busted Halo,” has been a driving force in evangelizing the young. There’s also the similarly named (but unrelated) Daughters of St. Paul, known as the “Media Nuns,” who assert “We are called to proclaim the Gospel to the world through the most effective means of communication.” It’s unclear exactly how Bishop Barron’s as-yet-unnamed order will exercise its ministry or live out this charism differently.
Secondly, the Barron effort appears devoted exclusively to fostering vocations to the priesthood. How about religious sisters? Or deacons? (The Paulists have a prominent diaconal component of deacon affiliates ministering around the country.) Word on Fire admits it consists right now of mostly lay people, so why not establish a “third order” of lay members, who formally exercise this communications mission as oblates?
It’s an ambitious plan — the Word on Fire website published a graph with a fundraising goal of $25 million to execute all its ideas, which include establishing the order, producing films and publishing books.
Stay tuned.
