Patrick Kingery was ordained a transitional deacon April 4 by Archbishop Agostino Cacciavillan, Apostolic Pro-Nuncio to the United States, at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore.

Reverend Mr. Kingery, the son of Jolaine and Bill Kingery of Immaculate Heart of Mary parish in Atlanta, is one of several candidates for ordination to the priesthood for the Atlanta archdiocese planned for the spring of 1993.

The ordination was “an affirmation of all the years of seminary formation and of those people who have helped me” Kingery said. “I felt very honored and privileged.” Along with a number of family and friends, Father Jim Miceli, pastor of St. Mary’s parish in Rome, where he worked last summer, and Father Terry Kane, pastor of St. Catherine of Siena parish in Kennesaw, as well as Sister Dawn Gear, GNSH, and Sister Rita Raffaele, GNSH, traveled to Baltimore for the ordination. The Grey Nuns had known him as a student at St. Pius X High School.

Reverend Mr. Kingery, a native of Atlanta, assisted for the first time in a parish setting as deacon for Palm Sunday Masses at Immaculate Heart of Mary parish.

“It was strange,” he observed, “to look out at the congregation and see people I had grown up with. It seemed just yesterday that I graduated from IHM school.”