OAK HARBOR, Ohio — Joel Konzen doesn’t recall when exactly he first felt his call to the priesthood, but he does remember exactly when he acted on it. It was at Saint Boniface Parish in Oak Harbor.

“I remember going to the rectory and ringing the doorbell at one point and saying to the priest, ‘I think I want to be a priest,’ ” he said, figuring he would have been 13 years old at the time. “[The priest] said, ‘That’s fine. Tell your parents to make an appointment.’ So we all went in, and he handed me a card and said, ‘This is where you’ll be going.’ ”

“In those days you didn’t have a lot of formalities,” he said with a laugh. “It was, ‘OK, here’s where you’ll ship out to. Call them up, and they’ll tell you all the rest.’ ”

A lot has changed in the 50-plus years since that conversation, both in the ways that young men approach the priesthood and in the life of the 13-year-old who went to the rectory that day. When he returns to the childhood parish that nurtured his vocation this weekend, he’ll be introducing himself by a new title: Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Atlanta.

Father Konzen was ordained to the new role in April. He will celebrate Mass at Saint Boniface, 215 Church St., Oak Harbor, at 4:30 p.m. Saturday and at 8:30 a.m. Sunday. There will be a reception on Saturday and a catered breakfast on Sunday after the services. All are welcome.

“We’re super-excited,” said Father Timothy Ferris, who pastors Saint Boniface Parish.

Bishop Konzen has fond memories of his childhood parish, where his mother would take him to Mass at 7:30 a.m. each weekday before school. Saint Boniface wouldn’t open a parish school until after he graduated, so he would walk a block to the public school after the service.

He also recalled altar serving, singing in the choir, and sometimes even playing the organ.

“We were a very Catholic family. My parents were deeply involved in the church,” he said. “Between Masses and Benediction and other services, we were there a lot.”

While high school seminarians are few and far between these days, it wasn’t uncommon in the early 1960s. Bishop Konzen left Oak Harbor for Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus as a teenager and then continued to Saint Meinrad Seminary in Indiana and Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. He would later pick up master’s degrees from the Catholic University of America in Washington.

Bishop Konzen had set out to be a diocesan priest, initially under the Diocese of Toledo and later under the Diocese of Atlanta; he’d made that switch in response to a large seminarian class in the former and a shortage in the latter when he was approaching ordination. In New Orleans he was introduced the Society of Mary, and, in another change in plans, he was ultimately ordained into that religious order in 1979.

In line with the charism of the Marists, Bishop Konzen primarily served in education-related roles. His longest tenures have been at Atlanta’s Marist School, where he served in various positions between 1980 and 1989 and where returned as principal in 1999. He had been anticipating stepping up as president for the 2018-2019 school year when he received an unexpected phone call in late January from the apostolic nuncio.

The apostolic nuncio is the papal delegate in the United States

“He said, ‘I just wanted to let you know that the holy father has selected you to be the auxiliary bishop of Atlanta,’ ” Bishop Konzen recalled. “I thought, Oh, for heaven’s sake. Is there a mistake? I was kind of speechless.”

Bishop Konzen has since been adjusting to the new position. As an auxiliary bishop, he assists Archbishop Wilton Gregory in his duties to a growing diocese that counts more than a million Catholics. He said he particularly enjoyed the opportunity this spring to visit the farthest reaches of the 69-county diocese to administer the sacrament of Confirmation to young people.

Confirmation is always administered by a bishop.

While Bishop Konzen said he typically returns to Ohio twice a year, in line with the school-year schedule on which he’s long operated, he’s more often spent his visiting Sundays near New Bavaria, Ohio, where his mother moved after his father died. Parishioners at the cluster of churches that serve that area would recognize him as their “Christmas priest,” he said.

Bishop Konzen has stayed in touch with friends in Oak Harbor, he said, and he has family in Port Clinton and Maumee. Just as his childhood parish is looking forward to welcoming him back, he’s looking forward to returning to his roots.

“I loved St. Boniface,” he said. “It will be good.”

Contact Nicki Gorny at ngorny@theblade.com or 419-724-6133.

First Published October 6, 2018, 1:20 p.m.