ROME| Sitting in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome awaiting Pope Leo XIV, Thomas Hammen is accompanied by 3,000 seminarians from all over the world.

Suddenly one seminarian breaks out in song, “Christus venci, Christus regnat, Christus imperat” (Christ victorious, Christ reigns, Christ rules) and all begin to sing. The sound fills the space like a warm embrace that touches the soul. Pope Leo appears and the voices crescendo in joy.

It was June 24, 2025, the Jubilee of Seminarians.

Hammen is a graduate of St. Joseph Catholic School in Winter Haven and Santa Fe Catholic High School in Lakeland, born into a devout Catholic family. He said his Catholic education taught him he was “not just a cog in a machine or to do a job to make money.”

“I was taught I was created by God because He loves me, and I have a calling or a vocation that is uniquely my own. United to Jesus, I can save the world with Him,” he said. “Catholic schools, and more so Catholic families, plant seeds in young people the culture can never kill.”

He said Catholic families are most important because they reinforce education through living faith, as witnesses to what trying to be a saint looks like. Hammen’s family are still parishioners at St. Joseph in Winter Haven. His parents, John and Judy, have modeled the faith well invigorated through a profound experience in Christ Renews His Parish Retreat.

His mother was involved in the youth group, and both parents served the parish during renovations. The family often prays the rosary when they are together and the couple took their youngest, Violet, to World Youth Day in 2023.

John led an example of prayer for his children which impacted Hammen at a young age. Hammen’s brother Anthony was president of University of Central Florida’s Catholic Campus Ministry and currently serves at a retreat center in Oklahoma. His sister Violet recently graduated from Santa Fe and serves her community through charitable events.

“Learning from great teachers and then coming home to an environment where I could tell my mom and dad loved God helped me realize that my relationship with God is just as important as STEM courses,” he said.

In college he strayed from his faith. Then he found St. Paul’s Outreach and the Brotherhood of Hope, eventually leading him to discern the priesthood. Entering Configuration 1 (previously known as Theology 1) at St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary in Boynton Beach, Hammen joined fellow seminarians from the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee on The Rome Experience this summer.

The program is designed for seminarians to experience the universal Church and develop an interior prayer life. To do this they attend classes at the Pontifical University of Santa Croce, visit pilgrimage sites, and spend time in morning and evening prayer and contemplation. The bonus this year was attending the Jubilee of Seminarians and meeting Pope Leo XIV.

Living in Rome for six weeks instilled a greater understanding of how Catholicism is deeply rooted in history. “St. Philip Neri, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Peter… all these saints are real people that we have historical evidence for and can be strongly verified and traced to Rome,” Hammen said. “It was beautiful to live little over a month in the same streets they lived in. It convinced me there are saints for every generation. We needed a St. Catherine of Siena during the Avignon papacy. We needed a St. Philip Neri when Rome was corrupt and needed reform. And now we need saints for today.”

Seeing how other men and women have played their part in the history of the Church inspires him to play his own part and encourage others to do the same.

While in Rome, he met people from Vietnam, Africa, Iraq, Mexico, and Japan. He noted, out of many cultures, “we are one because of Peter, because of the pope, and Rome. We have this meeting point where we can come together and we can still live our cultures beautifully,” he said with a renewed sense of enthusiasm.

But what especially struck a chord with Hammen was how the Augustinian Pope spoke about St. Augustine and the heart during his Jubilee address. You are called to love people with your heart Pope Leo told the seminarians. Hammen recalled him saying, Jesus Christ loved humanity with the heart of a man. Jesus wants to give you His heart to love His people. “He really encouraged us to wrestle with who we are in the depths of our heart and to bring the fears, insecurities and desires of our heart to Jesus as honestly as we can, because Jesus knows what our heart desires and wants to give us those desires and the strength to love with His heart,” said Hammen.

Pope Leo thanked the seminarians for their joy and their courage adding, “with your energy you fuel the flame of hope in the life of the Church.”

It is Pope Leo’s own missionary heart that speaks to Hammen. The first pope in centuries to be a missionary, his life as such in Peru instills a lived understanding of what that mission entails. “He knows what it’s like to live for other people and to do whatever it takes so they would know Jesus,” said Hammen. “I think many Catholics do not identify as missionaries. Yet by our Baptism, every one of us is called to have a heart for God’s people – as Pope Leo talks about.”

The young seminarian believes Pope Leo can teach us that all of us are called to be missionaries in little ways – at our workplace, with our friends. “We should all experience this desire, for the people that we love to know Jesus. Because if Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life and our friends don’t know Him, then how can we sit still? How can we be okay with that?” he said. “We should have a burning desire for them to know Jesus, who really satisfies the human heart.” He hopes, as a priest, he “won’t just wait for people to come to Church, but I will try to go out and speak the truth that every person is loved by God, and I want to be a missionary,” he said.

By Glenda Meekins of the Florida Catholic staff, July 10, 2025