Deacon Keith O’Hare, 30, says that powerful influences in his life include his parents, a diocesan priest and a large Catholic family he has known since elementary school.

His parents, Barry and Kathleen O'Hare, currently living in Fairfax, demonstrated "their consistent and generous living of the Faith both at home and in the parish," he said.

When in college, O’Hare accompanied a young adults group to a weekly holy hour at St. Catherine of Siena Church in Great Falls, where Father Jerome Fasano was pastor at the time. "He is a gifted preacher and he promoted vocations," said O’Hare. He was impressed with the priest’s "own personal example and also the seminarians who attended."

When he was growing up, O’Hare was close to the Madan family, which included 10 children. He attended elementary school with the youngest, Franco, who happened to attend George Mason University at the same time O’Hare did.

"We ended up there together," said O’Hare. "I found an old friend. He was a very outstanding instrument in awakening my faith."

O’Hare was born on Feb. 25, 1972. He has two brothers and one sister. O’Hare attended Paul VI Catholic High School in Fairfax. After attending the University of Miami from 1990-1992, he took classes at Northern Virginia Community College for a year, and then George Mason University in Fairfax, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 1996.

When he was in college, he coached junior varsity boy’s soccer at Paul VI, his alma mater. The spring that he graduated from the university, O’Hare attended a discernment retreat at St. Charles Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa., because he had started considering the priesthood, he said. Determining that he would take a year to decide, that time was spent teaching history to fifth-to-eighth-graders at St. Elizabeth School in Rockville, Md.

"After (these) experiences as a coach and a teacher I sensed a call to spiritual fatherhood," he said. "They were a preparation for priesthood." The following fall, in 1997, he entered the seminary.

While there, O’Hare spent one summer with Los Cruzados in Spain. He accompanied Antonio Pérez-Alcalá, Spanish youth program director for the Arlington Diocese and a consecrated member of Los Cruzados, a Catholic men’s movement. The trip was a Spanish language immersion and apostolate program, which offered pilgrimages and camps for boys in high school and college.

"It was a wonderful experience in many ways," he said. Since he knew only some Spanish, he said that "one of the fruits was that I knew what it was like to be an immigrant;" to have his native tongue, English, be a second language in the country.

When O’Hare was a student at the University of Miami in the early 1990s, it was on a full music scholarship for jazz saxophone. Since that time, music has continued to be an important part of his life, he said. Now he prefers sacred music, and will be composing some pieces for organ and voice for the first Mass he will celebrate as a newly-ordained priest. He also enjoys religious-music songwriting for the guitar, he said.

O’Hare spent his diaconate year at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Arlington and looks forward to his upcoming ministry.

"The administration of the sacraments is the priesthood’s raison d’etre [foundation] and so that’s the most important thing," he said. "However, I would also hope to promote Hispanic vocations, the noble worship of God and post-abortion healing."