It was a moment Father Warren Harvey had waited 37 years to see. A Black seminarian was ordained a deacon for the Diocese of Little Rock.
The trailblazing priest was ordained in 1988 and has been the only Black diocesan priest. On May 15, Duwan (pronounced Dwahn) Booker was ordained a transitional deacon during a Mass at the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Little Rock.
“It means a great deal,” Father Harvey said. “He brings with him a tremendous amount of compassion and love, and he brings with him the whole gamut of our culture coming from his background…. It is almost now like I can breathe easy.”
Booker, a member of St. Bartholomew Church in Little Rock, was raised in Fort Worth, primarily attending Baptist and Pentecostal churches, and played football at Hendrix College in Conway from 2015 to 2019. His friendship with fellow player Joel Brackett led him to the Catholic Church. He converted in 2018 with Brackett as his sponsor.
“It was the notion that this is the Church that our Lord established, and I found it to be true,” he told Arkansas Catholic of his conversion. “Whatever reservations I might have had were put to the back whenever I realized that the Church is true, so I submitted myself to truth, regardless of whatever cost that may have incurred upon me personally or socially.”
When he entered college, he considered joining the FBI or pursuing a career as a lawyer. After being a part of the Warriors for a couple of years, he turned his attention to becoming a football coach. But soon after his conversion, he felt a calling to the priesthood, like Brackett.
After earning a degree in philosophy and religious studies, Booker entered the House of Formation in Little Rock in 2019. He began studying in the theology program at Assumption Seminary in San Antonio in 2020. In 2022, he transferred to St. Meinrad Seminary in Indiana.
Joining Booker, 28, at his ordination Mass were his parents, LaDarius and NaKeisha Chambers of Fort Worth, and two of his siblings, London and Landon, as well as extended family members and friends. Also in attendance was Warriors head coach Justin “Buck” Buchanan.
Booker said his family was accepting of his decision to become a Catholic priest after he completed two years in the seminary.
“Initially, there was some tension there, just because the only things my family had really heard or known about the Catholic Church were really negative as it relates to the news and the scandals…,” he said. “After my second year in the seminary, my mom told me that she didn’t know everything about Catholicism but that she could see the change that it was having on me, … and that she believed I was a better man, a better brother and better son. From that point, everything was quite harmonious.”
As the only Catholic person in his family, Booker said he will have the sensitivity and understanding when working with people of different faiths.
“The book of Ecclesiastes talks about there being a time for everything under the sun, and so the Lord allowed me to experience the fruitfulness and richness of all of these other traditions at certain points in my life,” he said. “But it’s not something that I stowed away or destroyed by virtue of my Catholic faith, but it’s something that I cherish. I cherish the good.”
The Black Catholic community participated in the Mass, including the choirs of St. Bartholomew and St. Augustine Church in North Little Rock and members of the Knights and Ladies of St. Peter Claver.
This summer, Booker will minister at Our Lady of the Lake Church in Lake Village and its missions in Crossett and Hamburg.
