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2023 Diaconate Ordination
Bishop Peter A. Libasci ordained Reverend Mr. Eric Ouellette to the transitional diaconate at Saint Joseph Cathedral in Manchester on Saturday, May 27.
“We give thanks to God for Deacon Ouellette’s completion of a further step of ministerial and sacramental preparation toward ordination to the priesthood,” said Bishop Libasci. “Ours is a sacramental Church that is so grateful for the men who carry on the mandate of Our Lord Jesus Christ to ‘Do this in memory of me.’ I ask that you please keep Deacon Ouellette, and all our seminarians, in your prayers, along with our beloved priests and retired elderly priests who served God, and all of us, so well for many years.”
Deacon Ouellette was raised in Epping and is a parishioner of Saint Joseph Parish. After graduating from St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Dover, he earned a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from the University of New Hampshire. He also holds a Master of Arts degree in Catholic Philosophical Studies from Saint Meinrad Seminary and is currently working toward a Master of Divinity degree. He is now beginning his fourth year of Theology at Saint Meinrad Seminary, Indiana. He has a summer assignment at Saint Joseph Cathedral.
“I look forward to serving as a deacon this summer and during my last year of seminary, and to my ordination to the priesthood,” Deacon Ouellette said. “I am amazed at how much I have grown over my time in seminary and am particularly enjoying my theology classes on scripture and the Most Holy Trinity.”
Deacon Ouellette was vested at ordination by Rev. Gary Kosmowski, pastor of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Parish in Hampton and St. Theresa Parish in Rye.
During the Liturgy of the Eucharist, Bishop Libasci used wine that he brought for the occasion from the Abbey of Our Lady of Einsiedeln in Canton Schwyz, Switzerland, which was founded in the ninth century by the Benedictine monk Saint Meinrad. Two monks from the Abbey founded a community of Swiss German monks in southern Indiana in 1854, who ultimately established Saint Meinrad Seminary, where Deacon Ouellette and several of the Diocese of Manchester’s seminarians and priests have grown in their vocation to the priesthood.
The Diocese of Manchester currently has 12 men preparing for the priesthood at seminaries in Brighton, Massachusetts; Weston, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island; and Saint Meinrad, Indiana. For more information about vocations to the priesthood and religious life, visit www.catholicnh.org/vocations.
View a photo gallery of the ordination (Jeff Dachowski Photography).
