Fr. Clarence believes that his vocation to the priesthood has been in him since his youth. But for the man who became a priest at age 58 on May 20, 2006, the journey to ordination involved a lengthy and winding route. The Albuquerque, N.M., native spent some of his childhood in Los Angeles and Hawaii. After graduating from the University of Hawaii, he spent the next 30 years as a public-school teacher in Hawaii. He went into priestly formation for the Honolulu Diocese, which brought him to the San Francisco Bay Area where he entered St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park at the age of 49. He remained in formation at St. Patrick’s until he had completed his pastoral year at St. Leander in San Leandro and Our Lady of Guadalupe in Fremont. After many years in the Diocese of Oakland, he returned to Hawaii and joined the Diocese of Honolulu. He came to St. Jude in 2018. “I tell people that I like to think that God puts a hook in you and sometimes he lets you run your line out and then very slowly he starts to reel you in. In my case he has kind of reeled me in and had me filleted and gutted and pan-fried already. And I’m very happy about it.”