Out of tragedy, he discovered the Church and his vocation

Father Will Schmid is chaplain of Legatus’ Phoenix Chapter. He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Phoenix in 2009 and has since served as a high school chaplain, police chaplain, and professor at Benedictine University at Mesa, AZ. Today, he serves as pastor of San Francisco de Asis Parish in Flagstaff, AZ., the city’s only Catholic parish.

You grew up attending a Lutheran church. What led you to convert to Catholicism and into the seminary?

My conversion begins with a tragic story. I had a high school friend who, at age 17, was struck and killed by a drunk driver. She was a devout Catholic, and I attended her funeral at a Catholic church. I recall as a teenager sitting in front of the gold box—the tabernacle—talking to the Lord. It was a wake-up moment; I was not asking the most important questions in life. I promised Him I’d search for Him, but He had to help me out. I didn’t know what I was doing.

Another Catholic friend invited me to a Sunday night Mass followed by a youth group meeting. The first meeting featured a talk on the last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell (and purgatory). I remember how beautiful it was, and how clear the message was. I wanted to keep coming. After a year, I realized I believed what the Catholic Church taught and that it was the Church established by our Lord, so I joined it in 2001.

In college, I had a Catholic roommate, Matt Lowry, who was a youth minister. We would share our experiences together with prayer and our faith, and we both felt called to be priests. We entered the seminary together and were both ordained to the priesthood. He serves today as chaplain of the Newman Center at Northern Arizona University and lives in residence in my parish. So, once again we’re roommates!

What advice would you offer a young man considering the seminary?

Keep your eyes on the Lord, and let Him guide you. If we let Him, He will do amazing things through us.

What are the greatest rewards and the greatest challenges you’ve experienced as a priest?

The most rewarding is celebrating the sacraments, providing people with God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation and feeding people with His Body and Blood in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. The most challenging is trying to serve all of God’s people in this time when there is so much division in the Church and in America.

How did you become a Legatus chaplain?

One of my parishioners, Scott Fleckenstein, volunteered to offer advice on how to handle the business aspects of running the parish. He joined the parish council and was a great resource to me. He was the Legatus Phoenix Chapter president, and I could see what a positive influence it had been on his life.

He invited me to give a talk to the group on connecting faith and business. It went so well that I was invited to give the same presentation to other chapters around the country. I was asked to become the Phoenix chaplain in 2020.

We were in lockdown at the time, and I had to do my first meetings via Zoom. In recent months we’ve returned to in-person events, and I’ve gotten to know the membership. It’s been a wonderful experience getting to know people who love their Catholic faith, want the Lord to be part of every aspect of their lives, and desire to bring a positive change to our culture. They are true disciples of Jesus.