We invite readers to send short stories about the ways in which their lives have been personally blessed by the life and work of priests and religious in our diocese.

By Karina Fabian

Father Mike Poole’s life has been immersed in Catholicism. He attended Catholic schools in Butte and loved assisting in Mass. His mother encouraged vocations; his sister was a nun. In college, he’d “fall in” with the religious crowd. Whenever he had doubts in his faith, confusion about his life, or needed a friend, a priest would appear at the right time.

Yet Father Poole fought his vocation for nearly 30 years.

Those 30 years – serving four years in the Air Force, backpacking across Europe and hitchhiking around the United States, attending several colleges and church hopping with Christian friends – tell tales of adventure and disappointments, of returning briefly to the comforts of Montana and the Catholic faith, only to run again when comfort demanded responsibility.

Yet in Christmas of 1970, God reached out to him. He was driving home from college, wondering what gift to give his dying father.

“I had to pull over to the side of the road – I could no longer see through my tears. Then the gift of a family biography, ‘Christmas with Our Family,’ came to mind. A month later I was at his bedside. He turned to me and asked almost teasingly, ‘Where’s my book?’ Those were his last words to me. If Jesus was out calf roping that day, he must have roped me then,” he said.

Nonetheless, Father Poole fought that rope for many, many years. He said in looking back, he saw that he did not have an appreciation for Jesus or for the responsibility he himself had for bringing about his Kingdom. Yet, he felt a pull.

Finally, after leaving college for the third time, he traveled, studying in university libraries and transcribing the Bible in multiple languages. In Seattle, he studied Chinese with the thought of missionary work. “The book I had promised my father now had taken on much greater dimensions. I needed to know God the Father’s story and how Christ’s Mass defined my mission,” he said.

Nonetheless, when he was invited to Taiwan, he declined. Homesickness led him back to Montana.

Slowly, he was finding his direction, praying and reading Scripture while working in parishes in Bozeman. He again enrolled in Montana State University. Not only did he finish the book he’d promised his father so long ago, but he graduated with degrees in English literature and philosophy.

When he began inquiring about the monastic life, the diocese supported him. “I was shipped off to Mount Angel Seminary in Oregon with the stipulation that if I decided not to be a monk I could return to the diocese and they would ‘put me to work,’ ” he said. It was 1991.

He loved the monastery, yet found that the rigorous life did not suit him, and he missed Montana. Nonetheless, he continued to study hard, even though he didn’t expect to become a priest. “My age and less-than-sterling background ate at my self-confidence; but I continued to study Christ, the Scriptures and the Church. The three began to meld into one and I realized that the only way I would find completeness in my life would be to embrace this sacred mystery,” he said.

In 1998, Father Mike Poole was ordained. He served as an associate priest at the Cathedral of St. Helena for 15 months, followed by three years as an administrator at St. Joseph Parish in Harlowton and St. Bartholomew Parish in White Sulphur Springs with missions at Judith Gap and Shawmut. He’s now pastor at St. Michael Parish in Conrad, with St. William Parish in Dutton and Guardian Angel Mission in Powers.

Father Poole said, “Hardly a day goes by that I don’t wake up in the morning, and with amazement, wonder how this blessing of being ordained to priesthood occurred in my life.”


Published in The Montana Catholic, Vol. 24, No. 1, January 18, 2008.