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August 26, 2025One by one, emcee Father Jerome Krug called onto the stage the 25 young men who are discerning the priesthood in the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. With each new name, the applause grew from the large crowd at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame & Western Heritage Museum.
The introductions capped the evening at the annual Archbishop’s Dinner for Seminarian Education, hosted by the Catholic Foundation of Oklahoma. The dinner raised about $350,000 for the Saint John Vianney Endowment at the foundation, which helps defray costs of seminarians’ education and formation.
Archbishop Paul Coakley noted that today’s culture “is often marked by noise, distraction and discouragement.”
“But amid all that, we are witnessing something profoundly hopeful. God is still calling,” he said. “And thank God, young men are still answering.”
The dinner included remarks from the two newest priests in the archdiocese, Father Jonah Beckham and Father John Grim. Each was ordained June 28.
Father Beckham, who grew up at Saint John the Baptist Catholic Church in Edmond, choked up, and had many in the audience in tears, as he spoke about anointing a gravely ill woman on the second day of his priesthood.
“Her sister told me that before she entered the hospital that she wanted to become Catholic, but that night she went into a coma,” Father Beckham said.
The sick woman’s name was Susan Thomas – “a name I’ll never forget.”
“I put my hand on her shoulder and said, ‘Susan, if you can hear me, your sins have been forgiven,’ and she flatlined immediately.
“She spent her last 30 seconds, one minute, as a Catholic and in God’s grace. And that is what priests are able to do.”
Father Grim, the first priest to be ordained from Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church in Chandler, said his favorite heroes from a young age were saints. As a child, he told his mother he wanted to be a saint when he grew up. Her response: “Well, we are all called to be saints.”
“I was filled with childlike delight!” he said. “My mom not only supported my desire to be like my heroes and affirmed that it was possible, she affirmed that God was calling me to become a saint.”
The dinner also included a fun and spirited, Jeopardy-style game show called “Are you smarter than a seminarian?” Two teams of seminarians competed against the three priests from the Office of Vocations, with the winners (the Vocations Office clergy) receiving a bobblehead of Archbishop Coakley.
The dinner will return to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2026. The event is scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 6.