Civil engineer discovers vocation to priesthood later in life

By Bill Doyle | CFP Correspondent

Deacon Stephen J. Mullaney’s maternal grandfather, Stefano Simeoni, had a brother who was a bishop in Italy, and he was intent on one of his grandsons becoming a priest.

Deacon Mullaney was the youngest of his grandsons and his last hope. So, his grandfather recommended that he consider the idea when he was 5 years old.

More than 50 years later, his grandfather’s dream is about to come true. On June 1 Bishop McManus will ordain the 56-year-old to the priesthood.

“He’s up there in heaven, God willing,” Deacon Mullaney said of his grandfather, “and I’m sure he would be proud.”

Over the years, several others urged Deacon Mullaney to become a priest, but he decided against making the move for a long time due in part because of his own civil engineering business and because of the clergy sexual abuse scandal.

In the 1970s, he knew young people who were abused at his home parish of St. Leo in Leominster and as a student in the 1980s at St. Bernard’s Central Catholic High School, he was taught by priests who were removed from the priesthood because of sexual abuse.

Father Mark S. Rainville, who was associate pastor at St. Leo Parish at the time and who is now pastor at Our Lady of the Angels Parish in Worcester, helped Deacon Mullaney finally cope with his feelings about the scandal.
In 2015, he invited him and a handful of other middle-aged men to come up with ideas to bring the parish closer to the Leominster community.
 
The experience deepened his commitment to the Church, and he was inspired to begin attending the 7 a.m. daily Mass. When he told Father Rainville about his hesitancy to become a deacon due to the abuse scandal, Father Rainville told him if he did, he could help others cope with the scandal.

He entered the diocesan diaconate program but had to step aside after a little more than a year because running his business and taking care of his ill father, Richard, took too much of his time.

Deacon Mullaney is a registered professional civil engineer, licensed in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. He worked at David E. Ross Associates, Inc. in Ayer from 1990 until he founded S. J. Mullaney Engineering, Inc. in Leominster in 2004.

He was also a member of the board of directors of the North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce in Fitchburg from 2011 to 2020 and served as chair in 2018 and 2019.

After his father died in 2018, he planned to re-enter the diaconate program, but Father Juan G. Herrera, the associate pastor at the time at his parish, told him he belonged in the priesthood instead.

Soon afterward, Mr. Mullaney attended a First Friday holy hour and open house at Pope St. John XXIII National Seminary and a couple of months later he attended a weekend discernment retreat there. Then he made up his mind to become a priest.

On a Friday in 2020, he completed the transfer of ownership of his business to the principals of Summit Engineering and Survey, Inc. in North Oxford who agreed to keep his employees and his clients. The following Monday, he entered the seminary during the pandemic.

Father Rainville vested Deacon Mullaney for his diaconate ordination in May of 2023.

Father Herrera, currently pastor of St. Edward the Confessor Parish in Westminster, will be vesting him at his ordination. His sister, Joan Hodskins, will serve as a gift bearer.

Deacon Mullaney has always done what he can to help others. While in high school, he tended to his grandfather every day after school in a nursing home next door. After he graduated from Northeastern University, he tended to his grandmother, Madeline, in a nursing home every day after work.

He also took care of his ill mother, Assunta, before she died in 2007 as well as his ill father.

He served two summer assignments at St. Gabriel the Archangel Parish in Upton before serving the past year at St. Rose of Lima Parish in Northborough.

Last November, a woman in her late 80s was praying in church and told him that she had decided not to undergo treatment for a recent cancer diagnosis. He visited her quite often and they held many moving conversations, he said.
“It was just a tremendous experience, and I had the privilege of serving as deacon at her funeral Mass about a month ago,” he said.

Deacon Mullaney is a lifelong parishioner at St. Leo, receiving baptism, first Communion and confirmation there. He became an altar server in the fourth grade and a lector while in high school. He was also a Boy Scout, an extraordinary minister of holy Communion and member of the finance committee and the school building committee at the parish.
 
St. Leo will hold a Mass of Thanksgiving for him at 2 p.m. June 2, followed by a reception in the parish center. He’s ministered at St. Leo as a deacon a few times but returning as a priest will be a highlight. Some of the parishioners have known him since he was a child.

“They’re family to me,” he said.

Deacon Mullaney turned 56 on May 5, but he doesn’t consider himself to be old and he said he has a lot left to give.

Deacon Mullaney said parishioners appreciate delayed or second career vocations because those priests have life experi- ences and can relate to them.

He pointed out that two seminarians at Pope St. John XXIII National Seminary will be around age 75, the normal retirement age, when they are ordained as priests.

“People live longer lives today,” Deacon Mullaney said.

In a way, Deacon Mullaney’s life is just beginning.