Before his upcoming ordination to the priesthood, Deacon Gerard Gayou used to share the news with his readers as an assistant editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal. After his ordination on June 21, he will share the Good News of the Gospel as a priest with the faithful of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.
“I entered seminary even though I loved my job as a writer at the Wall Street Journal. ‘Life is good,’ I thought, ‘but I think God is calling me to something even bigger,’” Deacon Gayou wrote on the dcpriest.org website.
In another reflection on his call to the priesthood, Deacon Gayou wrote, “For my whole life, I’ve wanted to do something important and give myself to a mission bigger than myself. For a long time I thought that meant working in the White House or for a big newspaper, which I did for a time. When I was 23, God helped me understand that only one mission was big enough to satisfy my desire: His.”
The 31-year-old future priest is a native of St. Louis, Missouri who came to the Washington, D.C. area in 2012 to attend George Washington University. He earned a bachelor’s degree in international affairs and Chinese language and literature in 2016.
Prior to his stint at the Wall Street Journal, he worked with Princeton in Asia, an affiliation of Princeton University that offers fellowships in 18 Asian countries in the fields of education, international development, environmental advocacy, journalism, law, and business. Deacon Gayou spent two and one-half years in China, first as a teaching fellow and then as a journalism fellow. As a result, he is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. He also speaks Italian.
The call to the priesthood or religious life is a family tradition for Deacon Gayou. A first cousin, Father Henry Purcell, is a priest in the Archdiocese of St. Louis who serves as the pastor of St. Theodore Catholic Church in Wentzville, Missouri. Deacon Gayou’s second cousin, Sister Maria, is a cloistered religious sister at the Carmelite Monastery in St. Louis.
The future priest is the son of Don and Mary Gayou, and he has one brother and one sister. While growing up, he attended Immacolata Parish in Richmond Heights, Missouri. “I was raised in the faith by great parents,” Deacon Gayou said, “but when I went to college the faith became my own.”
While at George Washington University, Deacon Gayou said that “from about age 18-23, I alternated between total commitment to the faith and resistance to it. Finally, God revealed to me definitively my desperate need for a Savior.”
While preparing for the priesthood, Deacon Gayou studied at the Saint John Paul II Seminary in Washington and the Pontifical North American College in Rome.
Three priests were influential in his vocation: Father Adam Park, a priest of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington who was a chaplain at George Washington University’s Newman Center when Deacon Gayou was a student there; the late Father Arne Panula, an Opus Dei priest and director of the Catholic Information Center who died in 2017 and who was Deacon Gayou’s spiritual director; and Father Thomas Law, the pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Hong Kong.
Deacon Gayou’s hobbies include reading, writing, basketball, CrossFit training and running. He will celebrate his first Mass on June 22 at 11 a.m. at Immaculate Conception Church in Washington.
