After tragedy and loss, the potential future priest from New Ulm has found healing and his ultimate vocation through the Catholic Church.
Briefly:
- Brent Sundve lost his father and four other family members in a tragic accident at age three.
- Sundve’s path to Catholicism, and eventually The Saint Paul Seminary, meant leaving behind a life and ministry in the Church of the Nazarene.
- At the seminary, he has found not only a call to the priesthood but also deep personal healing.
When seminarian Brent Sundve was just 3 years old, his father took a routine trip to the airport to pick up family members. On the way home, a drunk driver slammed into their car. Sundve’s father, uncle, aunt and grandparents were killed instantly. Raised by a single mother from then on, Sundve carried the weight of that trauma into adulthood.
“I felt like I was abandoned by my heavenly Father and my earthly father as well,” the 50-year-old from the Diocese of New Ulm said.
That early loss cast a long shadow over his sense of identity, but it also laid the groundwork for something unexpected. It would eventually lead Sundve, now in his third year at The Saint Paul Seminary, toward Catholicism and the Catholic priesthood.
‘An ugly man unworthy of love’
As a teenager, Sundve endured more than emotional wounds. In eighth grade, he underwent major hip surgery, which was soon followed by a rare disease that caused the hair of his eyebrows and eyelashes to turn white.
The timing was cruel. “Right when I was interested in girls,” he says with a smile now.
One blow after another, Sundve began to believe his pain defined him.
“I thought I was an ugly man unworthy of love,” he said.
“[If you feel] abandoned or lonely or like you’re having trouble believing who you are in Jesus Christ, you are a son or daughter of God. … Jesus wants to bring about your wholeness, and He will meet you there.” — Seminarian Brent Sundve, Diocese of New Ulm
The suffering wasn’t just physical or emotional; it had seeped into his soul, shaping how he viewed his purpose, his identity and even his relationship with God.
‘What on earth are we doing here?’
Despite the struggles, Sundve entered ministry in the Church of the Nazarene, an evangelical denomination known partially for abstinence from alcohol, tobacco and dancing.
He followed in the footsteps of his grandfather, a Nazarene pastor, and eventually led worship and preached in a church of his own. But something was missing.
Sundve vividly remembers a Sunday morning when his senior pastor commented on a praise song by saying, “This will really get them going.”
Sundve paused. “What on earth are we doing here on Sunday?” he wondered.
That moment of doubt became the crack through which a deeper search began. He turned to Catholic education and discovered the history of Christian liturgy. He encountered the Mass, and the teachings of the Catholic Church, fully and authentically.
It was, he realized, everything he had been searching for.
‘Feeling’ Catholic
At age 33, Sundve was received into the Catholic Church in the same town where he had once served as a Nazarene pastor.
The personal cost was steep.
“I lost all my friends that were like family in that church,” he said. “It was a lonely experience.”
Even small cultural differences felt enormous at first. In one of his first jobs at a Catholic parish, Sundve was tasked with running the church festival raffle.
“Sitting right next to the beer garden and the pull tabs,” he grinned. “It just took a while to ‘feel’ Catholic.”
But as he immersed himself in the life of the Church and its people, he began to feel at home. That belonging opened him up once more to God’s voice, he said.
And, he soon discovered, a renewed calling.
‘Here I am’
On May 1, 2020, during a retreat planning session, Sundve watched a video that challenged him to give his whole life to Christ. The next day, while watching a Mass celebrated by Bishop Robert Barron (now of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, whose seminarians also attend The Saint Paul Seminary), he listened as the bishop preached on Peter’s words in the Acts of the Apostles (2:37):“They were cut to the heart.” Sundve was, too.
He called his vocations director the next day to discuss entering seminary formation. Six years later, he’s scheduled for ordination to the transitional diaconate in the spring of 2026, followed by priestly ordination a year later.
“Well, here I am,” he says with a laugh.
For Sundve, The Saint Paul Seminary has not just been a place of academic formation; it’s been a sanctuary of rediscovered purpose, he said.
“It’s the retreats … it’s the days of recollection, it’s the Tuesday night prayer meetings that have really been instrumental in my healing,” he said.
The trauma that once defined his life has now become a source of inspiration. At the seminary, Sundve has learned that God doesn’t discard brokenness; He redeems it.
“I’ve been taught here how God wants to use my wounds, my sufferings to help others who have been through similar instances,” — Seminarian Brent Sundve, Diocese of New Ulm
He now actively participates in praying for healing with others at nine local Twin Cities parishes. And he knows he’s not alone.
And those to whom he hopes to someday minister as a Catholic priest aren’t, either, he says.
“[If you feel] abandoned or lonely or like you’re having trouble believing who you are in Jesus Christ,” Sundve says, “you are a son or daughter of God. … Jesus wants to bring about your wholeness, and He will meet you there.”