A Catholic cleric, one of some two dozen deaf priests worldwide, is on a mission to change the perception of deafness so it is treated as a culture not a disability.
Father Min Seo Park, deaf since he was 2, is the new chaplain of St. Francis of Assisi Deaf Catholic Church in Landover Hills, Maryland.
Fr. Park, 52, is also chaplain to the Catholic community at Gallaudet University, the world’s only university in which learning takes place in American Sign Language (ASL) and English. He also provides pastoral support to the deaf population of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.
Changing attitudes toward deafness is challenging, but Father Park is up to the task. Besides being fluent in Korean Sign Language and ASL, he can write in Korean as well as English.
Father Park was born and raised in South Korea where he was educated in schools for the deaf. He immigrated to the United States in 1994 to study ASL and English at Gallaudet University’s English Language Institute and enrolled in an undergraduate degree program there a year later.
As a child, Park accompanied his schoolmates to Protestant churches. Park joined a Bible study program for the deaf at a Catholic church after a deaf art teacher introduced him to his Catholic parish.
Park converted to Catholicism at 17, but it wasn’t easy for him and his deaf peers to practice their faith, because few priests in South Korea used sign language.
“Deaf Catholics and I did not understand clearly what the priests said,” he recalls. “Some of them were not happy and eventually converted to Protestant churches.”
The handicap proved to be a blessing in disguise. “When I was praying alone in front of Jesus Christ on the cross at the chapel,” he says, “I asked him if he could send a signing priest for the deaf.”
The prayer opened a door for Park. “Suddenly, I felt that Jesus said to me, ‘Why not you?’” he recalls. “I said, ‘Me?’ That is how I began to consider the priestly vocation.”
A priest who wasn’t deaf but knew sign language helped Park contact Dominican priest Thomas Coughlin—the first deaf priest ordained in the United States. It was Coughlin who suggested that Park attend Gallaudet.
Park graduated from Gallaudet in 1999 and, on encouragement from Fr. Coughlin, he joined St. John’s Seminary in New York.
Park returned to Seoul in 2004 with a Master of Divinity degree from St. John’s Seminary. He was ordained a priest in 2007. While celebrating his first Mass, he was struck by the sight of a congregation of joyful worshipers.
“Some deaf people, who were poor at Korean writing and could not communicate with non-signing hearing priests, had not confessed to priests for many years—like 20 years,” he recalls. Such people “felt confident and comfortable to confess to me in sign language,” he says. “I was happy that I forgave their sins through the sacrament of confession.”
What’s more, the deaf congregants, having witnessed Park’s ordination, realized deaf people are God’s children as well, says Park. “They felt joyful and happy to listen to the word of God, the Gospel from me, a deaf priest.”
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