Pro soccer player retires to enter priesthood

BOSTON–When he was playing professional
soccer in Chile, Chase Hilgenbrinck would seek comfort in the churches
to satisfy his spiritual needs and remind him of childhood Sundays
spent at Holy Trinity in his hometown of Bloomington, Ill.

Even after moving back to the United States last Christmas to play
Major League Soccer–a dream of his, but just one of them–Hilgenbrinck
felt the pull of his religion.

“I felt called to something greater,” Hilgenbrinck said. “At one time I
thought that call might be professional soccer. In the past few years,
I found my soul is hungry for something else.

“I discerned, through prayer, that it was calling me to the Catholic
Church. I do not want this call to pass me by.”
Hilgenbrinck accepted the calling on Monday when he left the New
England Revolution and retired from professional soccer to enter a
seminary, where he will spend the next six years studying theology and
philosophy so he can be ordained as a Roman Catholic priest.

“It’s not that I’m ready to leave soccer. I still have a great passion
for the game,” he said in a telephone interview. “I wouldn’t leave the
game for just any other job. I’m moving on for the Lord. I want to do
the will of the Lord, I want to do what he wants for me, not what I
want to do for myself.”

Previously Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said. “I am
not ruling out that the Vatican could in the future have a soccer team
of great value able to compete with (Italian top Serie A league teams)
Roma, Inter, Genoa and Sampdoria,”  Maybe they are recruiting
ringers now?