Cardinal Cupich ordained nine men (read their bios) to the priesthood at Holy Name Cathedral May 15, welcoming them to a presbyterate that both looks to them with hope and offers them support and encouragement as they begin their lives as priests.

“We want you to know that there is so much of our lives as priests that puts us face to face with the human condition of living with ambiguity, the contingent, conditional, provisional, uncertain, indefinite, tentative, and the changeable of human life,” Cardinal Cupich told them in his homily. “That has been especially so for us who have lived in this era of the Second Vatican Council and the enormous cultural shifts that have taken place over the last half-century. Yet, we have come to learn and trust more deeply that it is in the in-between of life, the unsettled and uncertain that Christ, through the Spirit we received at ordination, reveals himself as the one who remains with us, abides with us.”

Ordained at the Mass were Ryan Patrick Brady; Nathan P. Ford, SJC; Christopher Landfried; Andrew William Matijevich; Ritchie Ortiz-Juárez; Robert S. Ryan; Leonel Sepulveda; Daniel Villalobos; and Sebastian Żebrowski.

Ford is a Canon Regular of St. John Cantius; the others are archdiocesan priests.

While they will not take up their parish assignments until July 1, the new priests were to celebrate their first Masses at parishes around the archdiocese on May 15 and 16.

“There is the happy coincidence that your first Masses will occur on the great feast of ambiguity, the Ascension,” Cardinal Cupich told them. “Jesus is present but also absent, raised up at the right hand of the Father but also more immersed in our human condition than ever through the Holy Spirit. Let this be a point of reference for your priesthood, that Christ from the beginning called you and Christians of all ages to live in the tension between heaven and earth.”

While family and friends were present to support and encourage the ordinandi, their numbers were limited to adhere to COVID-19 protocols, and those in attendance wore masks.

Hand sanitizer was used frequently by the cardinal and the men being ordained, and the cardinal anointed their hands with oil using individual cotton balls.

After Cardinal Cupich laid his hands on the heads of each of the nine men, more than 70 other priests did the same.

At the end of the Mass, Cardinal Cupich joked, “My hope is that this will be the last time, at least in my lifetime, that I have to ordain masked men.”

He then invited the newly ordained priests to briefly remove their masks so that the entire congregation could see their smiles.

The new priests weren’t the only ones delighted. Several members of their families joined a few of the newly ordained in shedding tears of joy.

“There are no words,” said Beth Matijevich, Andrew Matijevich’s mother, wiping tears from her face.

She and her husband, Mike, had just received a first blessing from their son, who started dreaming of becoming a priest in second grade. At 26, he is one of the youngest of the new priests.

“I had no doubt he would do it,” his mother said. “When he sets his mind to something, he accomplishes it.”

Sue Ryan, Robert Ryan’s mother, said her husband used to joke with her son about a vocation poster that hung in the back of their church in Antioch.

“He would say, ‘That’s for you, Rob,’ and we would laugh,” Sue Ryan said.

Ryan went to college in Michigan and moved to Texas to work, before coming back to Illinois and reconnecting to his faith.

“When he started discerning his vocation to the priesthood, I’ve never seen him so happy,” Sue Ryan said. “I’m so glad we were here to see it.”

Her son found a copy of that old vocation poster and framed it and gave it to his parents.

Żebrowski’s family could not travel from Poland to attend the ordination but watched the Mass on livestream. Before giving the final blessing, Cardinal Cupich invited him to address them from the podium in Polish.

Irma Salinas joined fellow parishioners of Good Shepherd, where Ortiz-Juárez did his internship, in attending the ordination Mass to support him, and she received a blessing from him after Mass.

“He’s going to be a good priest,” Salinas said. “He’s very human, and he has a good heart.”