As Pope John Paul II lay suffering in the last weeks of his life, he may have prayed the Lord send someone to carry the torch of his priesthood, rooted as it was in a love for young people and a heart attuned to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. If so, he found that someone in Father Timothy Tarnacki, director of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s Office of Ministry With Young Adults.
Just as Pope John Paul would spend the early years of his priesthood listening to the heartfelt desires of young adults on hikes through the mountains and the reading of Scripture by the light of a campfire, so has Father Tarnacki’s mission with young adults born similar fruit.
At least five marriages and several vocations have resulted from his work leading the young adult group at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown. Like the saintly pope, Father Tarnacki also was born in Poland, and he fills his young adult events with hikes, bonfires and even the occasional roller coaster ride.
Mostly, he listens. In fact, his young adult ministry began by listening to them in the confessional.
“I encountered many young adults, college students or young adults in their 20s and 30s, and I began really listening to what they were saying and listening to the deeper desires and longings that they were expressing and the challenges that they were facing,” he said. “On some level I could identify with a lot of those things, and I felt the call to respond to that in some way.”
It was a natural extension of his devotion to St. John Paul II, and it started with a dream.
Heeding the Call of a Dying Pope
The priesthood wasn’t a probable outcome for Father Tarnacki’s path considering he never felt particularly close to God until his family moved from Poland to the United States when he was 12 years old. While the family settled in Connecticut, his heart in many ways remained in his homeland. Fortunately, his local Catholic parish had Polish-speaking families who eased the transition for him, and it was then he became more involved in his faith.
But a priest? That seemed farfetched until one night he dreamed that then-Pope John Paul II gently asked him, “Would it be so bad if you became a priest?”
Fr. Tarnacki admits he was “skeptical about dreams,” but in the dream, “I was talking to St. John Paul II, and this was shortly before his death when he was very much on my mind because he was suffering and the whole world was really preparing for his death,” he said.
On the night that the pope died, April 2, 2005, Father Tarnacki found himself at a large Christian concert with his church group. His bishop and some seminarians came on stage and talked about vocations.
“It was in that moment that I felt like I was able to say yes to the Lord for the first time and to the idea that he knows what’s best for me; that he has a plan for my life,” he said.
That led to him joining the Pauline Fathers and attending seminary in Krakow, Poland, before returning to minister at the order’s Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa. He then had to choose the focus of his priestly ministry.
“My response to the calling and to becoming being a priest was really ‘Lord, whatever you want to use me for, I’m open to it,’” he said.
Asking the Lord to Help
In his heart, he felt the call to work with young adults, but his first attempt to organize a gathering failed.
“I went for a holy hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament, and I just started talking to God,” he said. “I told him, ‘Lord, you gave me these desires. You showed me the need. I feel this desire to work with young adults, but I keep failing. So unless you provide me the right people for this ministry, I’m not going to do anything about it. And that was it.”
Months later the Lord answered by sending Agata Manuel to the young priest’s doorstep. He barely knew her, and she lived in northern New Jersey, but she had a similar desire to start a ministry for young adults at the shrine. They held their first event in December 2020.
“It quickly became very, very vibrant and very well attended,” Father Tarnacki said. “And I see God’s blessing in that.”
The priest learned an invaluable lesson, through failure, about trusting in the Lord’s providence. “I am trying to be very dependent on the Lord and very humble because I realized that we carry this treasure, as St. Paul says in, earthen vessels. It’s something that is not of us, but it’s of the Lord.”
Today the young adult group at the shrine has more than 100 participants, and in 2023, the Catholic Church of Philadelphia asked Father Tarnacki to extend his work to the entire region, working under Father Stephen P. DeLacy, Vicar for the Office for Faith Formation with Youth and Young Adults.
“Father Timothy is wonderful,” said Alan Manuel, one of the leaders of the Czestochowa group. “He brings everyone together. He makes personal relationships with everyone in the group.”
Manuel got involved when Father Tarnacki asked him to bring some firewood for one of the first young adult gatherings. On one of the group’s first hikes, Alan met Agata and their love of Christ and the outdoors eventually led to marriage and the birth of their daughter.
“He has good answers, and he is just able to relate to each person individually in the way they need to be related to,” said Agata Manuel.
Finding Ways to Relate
One of the keys to building community is the willingness to get out of the church and to engage with people, Father Tarnacki said – just like St. John Paul II did.
“When I started working with young adults, I didn’t really connect the dots with John Paul II,” he said.
Now Father Tarnacki credits the saint’s intercession to do intuitively for young adults today what a young ather Karol Wojtyla did long ago in their shared homeland.
“Not all young adults feel like they belong in the Church,” Father Tarnacki said. “If you only meet in the church space, then that’s not always going to be successful. But when you go on those long hikes and when you spend a lot of time driving somewhere, or when you are at very casual events, amazing conversations happen. Relationships are being built and it’s easier to talk about really deeper things and more essential things in a lot of those circumstances.”
It is in those moments when Father Tarnacki sees the future of the Church.
“I’m very hopeful,” he said. “I think there’s a great renewal that’s happening in the Church, especially with young adults.
“That gives me a lot of hope because I see how many young adults are becoming more and more radical for Christ and radical for their faith. They are becoming the real missionary disciples.”
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Faces of Hope is a series of stories and videos highlighting the work of those who make the Catholic Church of Philadelphia the greatest force for good in the region. To learn more about a new way forward for the Church of Philadelphia, visit TrustandHope.org. If you know someone you’d like to see featured, please reach out to editor@catholicphilly.com.
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