On May 31, Archbishop José H. Gomez will ordain eight new priests for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.
In the days leading up to their ordination, we’ll be introducing them all.
Age: 32
Hometown: Santa Paula
Home parish: St. Sebastian Church, Santa Paula
Parish assignment: St. Mary of the Assumption Church, Whittier
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Paul Collins just wanted to help with the rats in Haiti.
When he was about 5 years old, a priest spoke in his parish — St. Sebastian Church in Santa Paula — something about the rat problem in Haiti. Whatever the story was, it made an impression on Collins, enough that he grew up thinking he wanted to be a missionary, maybe a priest.
“Certainly the idea of serving God and serving people who are in trouble was definitely always there,” said Collins, the second oldest of eight children.
On May 31, that idea will come to fruition at his ordination Mass. But the journey to get here was anything but straightforward.
He did become a missionary. After a couple of years in college, he went to live “in the high mountains of Peru” and discern the priesthood. He spent years there before returning home, still unsure of what his future held.
He returned to college and got a degree in psychology. After so many years away, he thought he’d be happy to return to the U.S. Instead, he quickly became disillusioned.
“It was actually a really hard time coming back,” Collins said. “People talked about reverse culture shock and different things. But eventually I realized what it was is I had been doing something really important and really meaningful and fulfilling during my time [in Peru], and then I came back and tried to just get a job and buy a phone and go to Dodger games and it was very underwhelming.”
After a few years, he realized the pull to become a priest was still strong. But now, he didn’t want to just become a priest — he wanted to serve a unique group: the military.
“People everywhere have a lot of hardship on their hearts that they want to talk to a priest or talk to God about,” Collins said. “But I think there’s a higher concentration in a population like the military, where there’s a lot of stress, a lot of hardship, even in peacetime, let alone if we go to war and there’s death and destruction. There’s a lot of need for God in those kinds of environments.”
After finishing college in 2016, he entered St. John’s Seminary in 2017.
After more than a decade of experiences and discernment, it only took days at St. John’s to figure out he was in the right place.
“By the second day at St John’s, I felt very at home,” Collins said. “I felt very settled. I felt I had a restlessness for the past three years since coming back from Peru in 2014, and that just went away really quick. Once I started St John’s, it really seemed clear that I was where I was supposed to be.”
Being co-sponsored by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Archdiocese for the Military, USA, he plans to be in LA for a few years before going off to serve as a Navy chaplain, which Collins said has the biggest need out of all the military branches. Timothy Broglio, archbishop of the Military Services Archdiocese and president of the USCCB, even attended Collins’ diaconate ordination Mass in 2024.
Whether he’s working at a parish or on a Navy ship in the middle of the ocean, either way he looks forward to having a heart to comfort those who are suffering.
“I think the most important thing is just letting people know that if they’re in pain, that I’ll be there with them,” Collins said. “Then it is important to try to help, to try to bring solutions, try to bring healing.
“But first and foremost, just to let people know if they’re in trouble, nobody really is paying attention to them, nobody’s listening to them, that I will sit there with them and just listen and just be there.”
