After 14 years of service in the military, Deacon Charles C. Wilton said he put down his medical bag and rifle and picked up his cross.
He was born Jan. 25, 1977, in Oakland, Calif. After living in Seattle for five years, the family settled in Derby, England, to be closer to his mother’s family in France. After graduating from De Montfort University in Leicester, England, he moved to south England, where he held a variety of jobs.
In 2003, he moved back to the U.S. and joined the Navy, serving for 14 years primarily as a Navy hospital corpsman, specializing as a field medical service technician.
His assignments took him to Bethesda, Md.; Jacksonville, N.C.; Afghanistan; Iraq; Korea; and Japan. By the time he began seminary, he was commissioned as an ensign in the Chaplain Candidate Program and had become a Navy chief.
During this time, he said God began guiding him to the Catholic faith. His parents were lapsed Catholics who joined the Anglican church, in which he was raised. He eventually became a nondenominational Christian.
While stationed in Korea in 2012, he experienced a conversion. “Jesus spoke to me very clearly. He said, ‘I want you to become Catholic. I want you to start going to church,’ ” Deacon Wilton said.
After this encounter, he began attending Mass at the base chapel and researching the faith, spending hours reading the website Catholic Answers. Under the guidance of Father Tyson Wood, a retired Army chaplain, he joined the Catholic Church during his tour in Afghanistan.
Months later, he felt God deliver “a big kick to the chest” — a call to the priesthood.
Canon law requires new converts to wait two years before entering the seminary.
Two years later while stationed in San Antonio, Texas, he was accepted as a seminarian for the Arlington diocese, assigned to Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., and accepted by the Archdiocese for Military Services to be co-sponsored throughout his time in seminary.
Having consecrated himself to Jesus through Mary and St. Joseph, Deacon Wilton said St. Joseph’s example provided security for him throughout seminary. “St. Joseph is a model of virtue and nobility. Calm, docile, collected,” he said. St. Joseph is to the world, “a model of true Christian masculinity, what it means to be a man,” he said.
After ordination, Deacon Wilton will be parochial vicar of St. Andrew the Apostle Church in Clifton. After three years of service in the diocese, Deacon Wilton will serve as a military chaplain.
“The responsibility of a priest is enormous; it’s huge,” he said. “But in order to succeed, you have to be docile and empty yourself to let the Lord lift you up and guide you.”
