“He will teach, he will celebrate Masses, he will offer priestly guidance to our students as the chaplain at Badin High School," said Principal Frank Margello. “It’s really a great opportunity for us.”
Muhlenkamp, the third of five sons in a family that owns a dairy farm, said he never gave much thought to being a priest growing up, but began hearing the call during his sophomore year at Ashland University, where he was studying mathematics and history.
“I got involved with Newman Campus Ministry and was asked to be a lector at Mass,” he said. “I looked out at my peers and the thought occurred to me that people were hungry and that with the grace of God I could feed them.”
Two months later when he went home for Christmas, the pastor of the local parish gave him a brochure for a “welcome weekend” at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary.
“The timing of that said a lot,” Muhlenkamp said, and so he went.
“I experienced a real, deep, abiding peace, so I knew I had to consider it more,” he said, but it wasn’t until he graduated from Ashland and spent a year at the Ohio State University College of Medicine that he decided to answer the call.
“During that year at med school, there was a real restlessness, that I wasn’t where God wanted me to be,” he said. “That next fall, I enrolled in the seminary.”
Badin spokesman Dirk Allen said that the school has been without a priest for 10 years because there’s a national shortage of priests.
“To find a priest who is also a teacher is very difficult,” he said. “Those who are available to go into the schools are needed in churches.”
Muhlenkamp said that when he was ready to graduate, he let it be known that he was interested in going to a high school.
“I want to be a positive role model for the youth,” he said. “They have a spirit that I find energizing.”
Margello said he thought adding a priest to the staff was an important and positive step for Badin.
“When I determined that there might be an opportunity to get a priest on the faculty from this current graduating class at the seminary, I worked hard to make that happen,” Margello said. “As a Catholic school, we have not had either a priest or a nun here for many years. We needed to fill that void, and Robert Muhlenkamp will be a fine addition to Badin High School.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2188 or rjones@coxohio.com.
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