Back in the mid- to late 1990s, Ed Dolphin was a student at St. Edmond’s Academy in north Wilmington. He went on to Archmere Academy, Drexel University and a career in information technology, but something about that time at St. Edmond’s stuck with him.
At that time, the school had several Holy Cross brothers on the staff; the congregation had started St. Edmond’s in the early 1960s. Fast forward to the mid-2010s, and Dolphin believed he had a vocation to the priesthood. He considered the diocesan priesthood, but he felt the Holy Cross congregation fit more with what he was looking for.
“Even though I’d never met a Holy Cross priest, I knew that Holy Cross had priests, and I really looked up to the brothers as a kid. I really admired their dedication to the school and to the students,” he said recently. “They were just tremendous witnesses.”
After nearly eight years of formation, Deacon Dolphin has reached the time for his priestly ordination. That will take place on April 6 at the Basilica of Sacred Heart on the campus of Notre Dame University in Indiana, in the shadow of Mary Atop the Golden Dome. He will say his first Mass at the basilica the next morning at 10 a.m.
Deacon Dolphin, 37, grew up in Brandywine Hundred as a member of Church of the Holy Child. He said he looked up to several of the priests who served there, including Father James Kirk and the late Fathers Francis Kenney and Jim Richardson. But when he graduated from Archmere, he wasn’t considering becoming a priest.
Instead, he studied information systems at Drexel and worked for eight years as a software engineer in healthcare and telecommunications. The idea that he may have a priestly vocation “kind of struck suddenly.”
“I was living in West Chester at the time, and I was going to St. Agnes Parish there,” he recalled. “The reading of Samuel’s call to the temple, I heard that at Mass, and all of a sudden it was like, ‘Oh, that call was for me.’ I wasn’t just hearing something that was happening thousands of years ago.
“I never really thought that God possibly called me to that kind of vocation. Definitely, it was a surprise for me.”
Deacon Dolphin wasn’t sure what to do, but he figured this “crazy idea” would eventually go away. During his career as a software engineer, he had occasionally considered moving to the West Coast, but that thought would dissipate. The idea of the priesthood stuck with him.
He talked to Father Charles Dillingham, a retired priest who was then the director of vocations, about entering seminary for the Diocese of Wilmington, but since he had experienced the Holy Cross brothers at St. Edmond’s, “I instinctively felt, like, Holy Cross.”
Deacon Dolphin said his friends were a bit surprised at his decision, but when they looked back at his life, they weren’t as surprised. He said everyone has been very supportive.
Michael Burdziak, a theology teacher at Archmere, taught Deacon Dolphin when he was a senior and worked with him at the school over the summers. Burdziak said the deacon was quiet and reserved in class, but always attentive.
“We had lots of fun working together during the summer when cutting grass, painting the small gym, and the St. Norbert Hall classrooms,” Burdziak recalled. “Ed had a quick wit and dry humor.
“Little did I know at the time that the Holy Spirit was working through Ed and calling him to the priesthood. God works in strange and wonderful ways! I am overjoyed.”
It has been a long road since he entered seminary, but Deacon Dolphin is ready for ordination. He said the journey has been reassuring. He recently attended a pre-ordination retreat, “and it’s pretty exciting.”
There are eight men who will be ordained in the basilica on April 6, and others who are in various stages of discernment will be on hand as well. Deacon Dolphin’s parents, Jim and Tina, who are still members of Holy Child, will be there, as will his two older sisters, some close friends and other relatives.
Burdziak will be there, as will John Jordan, who was a teacher at Archmere then and is now the school’s director of development and constituent relations.
Deacon Dolphin lives and works at Notre Dame, the congregation’s best-known institution. He is currently the rector of a residence hall on campus, which he described as looking out for the well-being of the residents from a spiritual, physical and emotional standpoint.
“In some ways, I’m like the pastor of a little parish,” he said.
He enjoys spending time around college students, although that required a change to his normal sleeping routine. In the seminary, he would normally wake around 4:15 a.m. College students are not known for keeping the same hours.
One of the hobbies he learned in the novitiate was breadmaking. He has turned that into a community experience for the students in his hall.
“Each week, I had meatball Monday for the guys here in the hall,” he said. “I made 15 pounds of meatballs and a couple loaves of bread and put that out at 10 o’clock on Monday night. That’s a good way for the hall to kind of come together and hang out and grab a little snack before they go about whatever their Monday night activities are.
“It’s a lot of fun being a rector. There’s a lot of energy in the hall. We have a lot of fun.”
Deacon Dolphin has been exposed to Holy Cross’ many ministries and has learned that the congregation serves the church in ways that are different from other communities and from diocesan priests. Lots of Holy Cross brothers and priests are teachers at various levels and in different locations. He considers the ability to move around a gift.
He is ready to do whatever the community asks.
“Our ministry does such a good job of complementing our brothers in the diocesan priesthood so that we can really reach out to people from all over who maybe don’t fall under the diocesan structure,” he said.
In a way, this attitude fits in with his experience at Archmere as a member of the football and lacrosse teams. Deacon Dolphin said he was never the best player, “but I really liked being on a team. I liked being able to hang out with friends who were also on the team.”
