“A large part of diocesan priesthood is connecting with people,” he says, “and when I worked at Bob Evans, it was a lot of customer service.”
Even getting to Bob Evans was a roundabout journey for Schaeper. After starting at Fifth Third upon graduation, he left in 1998 to enter the seminary. Five years later, he took a leave of absence and moved to Greenville, S.C., with his brother. There he began working at Bob Evans. When his brother took a job at Thomas More College in Northern Kentucky in 2005, Schaeper followed. The chaplain at Thomas More encouraged him to continue pursing his vocation. He did.
A month after ordination, Schaeper started his current job as parochial vicar at St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Fort Thomas, Ky. “It’s a great vocation to minister to the people of God and bring them closer to Christ,” Schaeper says.
And it’s a long way from seating hungry patrons, but not so different after all.
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