Briefly:
- Fr. Scott Padrnos balances his ministry in Minnesota with missionary work in Cambodia, sharing the Gospel with those who have never heard the name of Jesus.
- Locally, he nurtures young men’s faith through weekly gatherings and vocational guidance, helping them discover God’s calling in their lives.
- Grounded by formation at The Saint Paul Seminary, Fr. Padrnos embraces his busy, fulfilling vocation with gratitude and a desire to lead others to Christ.
The bottom half of Fr. Scott Padrnos’ black cassock has turned white, caked with concrete mix underneath the sweltering Cambodian sun.
The priest of the Diocese of Duluth grew up on his family’s classic Minnesota cabin resort. He celebrates Mass in the same sanctuaries where he altar served as a child. Attending The Saint Paul Seminary — 144 miles away from the Brainerd area — was about his farthest foray away from home.
Until now.
For the past two years, Padrnos has joined Duluth native Nic Davidson, his wife Jacelyn and their five children at the family’s Catholic mission in Krong Siem Reap, the second-largest city in Cambodia.
Here, Padrnos and 8-10 other Brainerd-area volunteers spend their days doing manual labor – today, it’s paving a sidewalk at a nearby school – and introducing the locals to Catholicism.
For many, it’s the first time they’ve ever heard the name “Jesus.”
“It is a lot of fun going over there and watching the Lord work,” Padrnos said.
But ask Padrnos, and he’ll tell you he doesn’t need to go to the other side of the world to see that.
Back home, he leads a weekly gathering of local high school men seeking to grow deeper in their faith. In addition to serving at St. Francis and All Saints in Brainerd, he’s begun work as the Diocese of Duluth’s associate director of vocations.
“It’s busier than I ever could have imagined, but way more graceful than I ever could have imagined. Even with all the busyness, I wouldn’t trade a second for anything else.” — Fr. Scott Padrnos
On July 1, 2025, he’ll become the diocese’s first full-time director of vocations, accompanying and guiding young men from northeastern Minnesota who experience a call to the Catholic priesthood.
All this before Padrnos’ third ordination anniversary this spring.
“It’s busier than I ever could have imagined, but way more graceful than I ever could have imagined,” Padrnos said. “Even with all the busyness, I wouldn’t trade a second for anything else.”
Padrnos says the human, intellectual, spiritual and pastoral dimensions of seminary formation, as called for by the Church and brought to life at the seminary, made him “unbelievably prepared.”
So, he didn’t blink when a high school senior asked him, on the way back from a Steubenville Catholic youth conference, to lead a weekly gathering for young, Catholic men. Today, 20-25 of them show up every Sunday for evening prayer, dinner, conversation and regular viewings of the show “Band of Brothers.”
The group, named after that 2001 TV miniseries, also meets for the occasional paintball tournament and participates in Exodus 90 — a spiritual exercise for men based on prayer, asceticism and fraternity — during both Advent and Lent.
“It’s coming from a desire that they have, and they’re owning it,” Padrnos said. “It’s not us trying to impose something on them that we know is good for them, but it’s coming from a response within them.”
It’s the same type of response Padrnos observes in his vocations work. As a younger priest who wrestled in college (NCAA Division III St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota) and experienced a reversion to Catholicism when he was 25, he relates to young men at different stages of their journeys.
Padrnos is one of 45 priests listed on the Diocese of Duluth’s website. To take one of them out of a parish setting to become a director of vocations represents a sizable investment in fostering priestly discernment among the next generation, Padrnos said.
“I’m grateful for Bishop Daniel Felton, because he’s putting his money where his mouth is,” Padrnos said. “One of his phrases is ‘the fruit we are getting currently is good fruit. The guys going to seminary are great men. But it’s also a low-hanging fruit — these are the guys that are coming to us. I wonder what will happen if we go out and start shaking the trees a little bit.’”
Literal, physical fruit — especially fresh-picked melon — is one of the things that keeps Padrnos going back to Cambodia each year, he joked. His February 2025 trip to the Cambodian mission will be his third.
The tropical country is roughly the size of Missouri and has a population of 17.3 million. In 2023, about one-fifth of those people earned less than the equivalent of $2.15 per day.
Cambodia is also 98 percent Buddhist. The first Christian missionaries in the area arrived after 1900, and the communist Khmer Rouge regime essentially wiped out Christianity during the latter part of the 20th century. That means plenty of opportunities for evangelization.
“It is a time that always fills my heart with great zeal for preaching the Gospel to people,” said Padrnos, who brought current Saint Paul Seminary seminarian Josh French along with him this year. “It’s been a gift.”
