We are very excited to have Fr. Chun join our parish family. We thought you might also enjoy knowing more about this very gifted man.

Fr. Glen Chun was ordained in June, 2008. He grew up in Honolulu, and has an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. He taught accounting at Xavier University in Cincinnati and has led students from St. Xavier High (Cincinnati) on service trips to the Dominican Republic and el Salvador. He has served as a prison chaplain in Chicago and is a trustee of St. Ignatius College Prep there.

Not your typical path

Moanalua graduate to be ordained a Jesuit in June in Chicago

By Anna Weaver | Hawaii Catholic Herald
Posted on Friday, February 22, 2008

When the Oahu-raised Glen Chun was accepted for ordination as a Jesuit, his response was one of amazement and gratitude.

That’s because Chun did not take the typical path to the priesthood. He was an accountant for 17 years, didn’t become Catholic until 1995 and will be 51 when he is ordained in June.

“I never ever dreamed of anything like this,” said Chun, who will be ordained this June in Chicago. “I know it’s the Spirit at work because it never would have been my desire or will to go down this track.”

Chun was born in Tokyo in 1957 where his father Edward, who recently passed away, was assigned after being at Hickam Air Force Base. The family moved back to Hawaii when he was two. Chun and his two brothers would participate in Buddhist ceremonies and traditions with their Chinese immigrant grandparents. But Chun says his parents weren’t particularly religious and “we weren’t raised to be Buddhist.”

He attended Moanalua Elementary, Intermediate and High Schools before earning an accounting degree at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass. He eventually went to work for Bendix Corporation in accounting and finance management. The company sent him to the University of Notre Dame’s master’s in business administration program and to work for their nearby South Bend plant.

For several years Chun wasn’t entirely happy with his career.

“I really disliked management and the way the corporate world had been going,” he said. “I had a lot of ethical problems with it.”

But moving to South Bend led to his eventually conversion.

“I can see that there has been a clear overlay of the Spirit in my life even going back to before I was aware of it,” he said. “And I can see and remember times when I was attracted by the Spirit at certain times.”

While working in South Bend, a business partner and his wife began taking him to services at their Baptist Church. Other friends, who were Catholic, also invited him to Mass.

“They all knew that I was strongly critical of both Christianity and Catholicism,” he said, but he gradually came around. Over a period of four or five months, Chun was going to both Baptist and Catholic churches before he chose Catholicism.

The liturgy just ‘clicked’

He said “the liturgy just clicked.” He also saw parallels between the Catholic faith and his “Buddhist roots.” “I found Catholicism much more open to the question of salvation and connections with ancestors and those kinds of things,” he said.

Chun entered the RCIA program at Christ the King Church in South Bend in 1994 and became Catholic the next year. He also started feeling a call to the priesthood and quit his job with Bendix in 1996.

Three of the RCIA team members who taught Chun were newly ordained Holy Cross Fathers, so he first looked into joining that order. After finding out he was too old, he went to a vocations retreat in Chicago and learned about both the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Society of Jesus.

He began a parallel discernment process for both but after a year of parish work in the archdiocese, Chun said he decided he was looking for more of a religious community life and a variety of apostolic work.

Chun’s time with the Jesuits has included missionary work, part-time business teaching and apostolic work at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, and of course seminary studies. He earned his master’s in applied philosophy from Loyola University Chicago in 2003 and will complete his master’s in divinity degree from The Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley in May. That brings his number of graduate degrees to three, which is ironic he says because, “After [college] I said I’d never go back to school.”

Chun became a deacon this past October and will be ordained a priest on June 7 at Holy Family Church in Chicago. He will be assigned to St. Xavier Church in Cincinnati and teach one class in the business school at Xavier University.

Chun says that the Jesuits are undergoing many changes right now including the recent election in Rome of a new Father General, the realignment of United States provinces — including his own Chicago province — and formation and expansion of programs like the Christo Rey Network for underprivileged, urban students.

There is an increasing emphasis on collaboration and sharing of leadership with the laity. “They’re reconsidering aspects of Jesuit life,” he said.

As Chun approaches his ordination date he says he continues to feel “actively challenged” in his vows. “It’s a cyclical spirituality,” he said. “We’re always reencountering Christ.”

“Now I just have to trust in the Lord.”