Deacon Kady’s path to priesthood included Saudi Arabia, footsteps of St. Paul

Scott Kady’s career in the oil business took him to Texas and Saudi Arabia.

Family brought him back home to the Tri-Towns, along the Potomac River that separates Maryland from West Virginia, where he nursed his mother as she rapidly succumbed to cancer. 

That was in April 2013. Kady had dabbled with being a Benedictine monk and was pondering what next to do with his life when a Conventual Franciscan friar posed the question: Have you ever considered the diocesan priesthood?

“I said no. He asked why,” said Deacon Kady, who will turn 60 in August. “I told him, ‘I don’t look like any of the other seminarians on the (vocations) poster.’ I doubt he even remembers the conversation.”

Conventual Franciscan Father Eric Gauchat, now a hospital chaplain serving Western Maryland, did indeed draw a blank on the exchange, but easily recalled what precipitated it.

“Scott is a marked man, a good man,” Father Gauchat said. “There’s an integrity about him, a peace, a maturity. I’m proud that he hung in there.”

Archbishop William E. Lori will ordain Deacon Kady to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Baltimore June 19 at St. Peter in Westernport, where Deacon Kady entered the Catholic faith at age 21. (The 11 a.m. ordination liturgy will be livestreamed at www.archbalt.org.)

For the future priest, teen rebellion took the form of questioning his Methodist roots.

“I was at church with my grandmother one Sunday and we were reciting the Apostles Creed,” he said. “When we got to the part, ‘I believe in the holy catholic church,’ I said, ‘Wait a minute, we’re Methodist. Why are we professing this?’

“She explained to me what the word catholic means (that all Christians are part of one church). Not long after, I found that my father’s side of the family was Catholic. I started doing more research, on the faith as well.”

When he wasn’t at Keyser High in West Virginia, Kady worked, usually for the Piedmont Herald, doing everything but producing bylines. A community notice in the weekly paper caught his eye, and off to religious education at St. Peter he went. It was six miles to the nearest Catholic church in his home diocese, Wheeling-Charleston, but he could walk to St. Peter, where he entered the church in 1983.

He took another leap of faith a year later, when a shrinking local economy compelled him to move to Texas. Deacon Kady spent 18 years with Aramco and nine with its parent, Saudi Aramco, the Saudi Arabian public petroleum and natural gas company. 

Whether it was in Houston, most frequently at the chapel of the University of St. Thomas, or Dhahran on the Persian Gulf, he continued to embrace the faith.

“When the opportunity came to go to Saudi Arabia, I was apprehensive,” Deacon Kady said. “A spiritual director I had at the time, Judy Owens, a co-worker, reminded me that the God that is here is the same God that’s in Saudi Arabia.”

The Muslim nation bans the practice of Catholicism, but with 1 million Filipinos working in the country, people find a way. 

“Going to Mass, in a protected environment, there are all these different cultures  in native dress,” Deacon Kady said. “Like any American, I sat in one of the last pews. Looking up, it was just beautiful to see. It was a serene feeling, that the church is full of love for all.”

His appreciation for the universal church included the fact that he could have breathed the same air as two Navy veterans who are now archdiocesan brethren, Father William Keown and transitional Deacon Jim Bors.

“Father Bill was stationed in Bahrain the same time I was in Saudi Arabia,” Deacon Kady said. “I traveled there for a number of things, and we probably crossed paths without knowing it.”

Vacations took him to sites associated with St. Paul, such as Ephesus, Turkey, and Damascus, “before the civil war in Syria, of course.”

“Each place helped bring the faith alive even more,” Deacon Kady said. “Once you see them, you hear Scripture differently.”

There were also frequent trips to Rome, where he experienced the community life of the Benedictines. That led Deacon Kady to take early retirement in 2011, and become a postulant at St. Bede’s Abbey in Peru, Ill. 

He felt pulled to his mother, however, and returned to the Tri-Towns. She was physically ailing, and died in April 2013, a month after her cancer was diagnosed and two days after 77th birthday.

“Looking back, as we always do, I saw why I was compelled to leave seminary,” he said. “God allowed me to have those last eight months with my mother before she passed away.”

He’s the oldest of four siblings. The other three, Bill, Patti and Cindy, live on the same street in Piedmont, W.Va., on which they were raised, and insisted that he take their mother’s home. Bill is renovating it. 

Besides caring for his mother, Deacon Kady also trained to become a respite provider for Alana Coleman, Patti’s now 22-year-old daughter, who has Aicardi syndrome, a rare genetic disorder which affects brain development.

“We can’t just leave her with anybody when we need a break,” Patti said. “There’s feeding time, maintaining seizures, even changing diapers. He has such a big heart. If someone needs something, anything, he’ll be there.”

Deacon Kady counts as influences the men who have served as pastor of St. Peter in Westernport, now part of Divine Mercy Parish. They include Father Edward Hendricks, Bishop Adam J. Parker, Monsignor James Hannon and Monsignor Paul Byrnes, who died 11 days after Deacon Kady’s ordination to the transitional diaconate. 

In his absence, Monsignor Hannon vested Deacon Kady last August, when he was ordained a transitional deacon. He will take on that honor again at his priestly ordination. 

There is also Monsignor Richard Woy, another “Tri-Towns guy,” who was ordained a priest at St. Peter the Apostle in 1979, and Monsignor James Barker, pastor of St. Ignatius, Hickory, where Deacon Kady spent his pastoral year and much of the last year. He will celebrate a Mass of thanksgiving there July 11. 

“Scott exudes his faith in his joyful approach to everyone,” Monsignor Barker said. “He is upbeat, faith-filled, engaging and a real pleasure to serve with. The staff and parishioners here care for him very much. He will be a blessing to whatever community he is called to serve.”

Email Paul McMullen at pmcmullen@CatholicReview.org 

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