FAYETTEVILLE
New to the state, Austin Bradley, 22, said he is excited to be the new campus minister at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish at the University of Arkansas.
Bradley is originally from De Soto, Kan., growing up going to two different churches.
“My dad is Catholic, my mom is not,” he said. “So we would switch off on the weekends which church we’d go to. We’d go to a nondenominational church with my mom and then go to the Catholic church with my dad.”
Despite going to parish religious education classes when he was younger, he was not very involved in his parish. Unsure of what he wanted to do with his faith when he started at Kansas State University in 2020, Bradley began to explore. He first attended a Bible study at the Catholic student center, began going to daily Mass occasionally and went to confession for the first time in years.
“I really started to find a community there and make really great friends. I went on a couple of different retreats that were just super impactful to me and took away a lot of my doubts, and helped me to make that firm decision that I wanted to be fully Catholic,” he said.
Later in college, he began to take on more responsibility, such as leading the praise and worship team and Bible study. He said he “was given a variety of different leadership roles like that and really just loved being part of ministry.”
Despite graduating in May as a pre-physician assistant student majoring in horticulture science, it was an easy decision for Bradley to explore a career in campus ministry after college. He said it was a great way to continue what he had been doing at Kansas State “walking with people in relationship and helping them to encounter Christ in deeper ways than they had prior in life.”
If you could meet Pope Francis, what would you ask him?
“I would ask how he handles all of that responsibility that rests on his shoulders. But also I think I’d be really curious about how amazing that must be to be living in that legacy of Peter and so many folks that came before him. That’s something that most people never expect to experience so what that must be like — I would think it’d be pretty surreal.”
More stories will appear in our 15 Young Adults Who Inspire Us 2024 Section as they are posted online.
