‘AN AMAZING JOY’

Deacon Alexander Turpin, nurtured by a community of faith, set to be ordained to the priesthood

Alexander Turpin smiles with his mother, Carmela Turpin (far l.), sister, Carla Angiolillo, and brotherin-law, Thomas John Angiolillo, after his diaconate ordination last May at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany. (Photo provided)

When Alexander Turpin was in second grade, he received First Communion at the altar of his ­family’s church, St. Pius X in Loudonville. 

On Sunday, May 17, Turpin will return to his home parish for Communion once again, but this time, to distribute the Communion himself. 

Deacon Turpin, who will be ordained to the priesthood on Saturday, May 16, at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany, will celebrate his first Mass the following day at St. Pius X at 3 p.m.

“Everything sort of comes full circle,” Turpin told The Evangelist. “How did I come to be so fortunate that not only did God give me the call (to the priesthood) but he placed the desire to respond to the call in my heart and gave me an amazing community who nurtured my faith and my call and my abilities.”

Turpin has been preparing for this weekend since entering the seminary in 2020. In 2022, he was selected to continue formation in Rome at the Pontifical North American College and the Pontifical Gregorian University. In March, he returned to the Albany Diocese to prepare for his priestly ordination. Over the past few months, he has been assisting the chaplain ministries at Saratoga Hospital.  

Turpin noted that “the hospital is an interesting capstone to my time as a transitional deacon” because of how much the role is tasked with bringing faith to the people. 

“It’s where the rubber meets the road in terms of making yourself the channel for people outside the church building to the altar,” he said. “For the folks in the hospital, they cannot go to the church, they cannot be at the liturgy, they cannot pray in the assembly the same way that the majority of us are able to, and it really is the diaconal responsibility to make the liturgical reality a reality for these people.”

When thinking about ordination weekend, Turpin described the feeling as a mix of “absolute total excitement” and a grounding reminder of the promises he is making.

“When you’re studying and praying about these promises, you can see them as, ‘Oh my goodness, how am I going to live up to these promises?’ This seems like quite the high bar, and of course it is, but when you make it to diaconate formation and you make those promises, it really changes your life because then you really do live them out. The promises themselves become the means by which you live your life.

“So (for the) priestly ordination, what I hear in my head is: ‘Alex, I have helped you stay true to these promises and to love these promises and find strength and comfort in these promises for a year; I’m going to do it for the rest of your life. You already know the good that these promises have brought you, and I promise you it’s going to be so much more.’ ”

Turpin started thinking about the priesthood in late high school and college but was so focused on his passion for music and singing that he put it on the back burner. 

He went on to receive his Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music and his master’s in vocal performance from the University of Michigan. While at Eastman, Turpin was the recipient of the Ornest Award for excellence in vocal study, as well as a prize winner in the Jessie Kneisel Lieder Competition, and spent time abroad at Humboldt University in Berlin, studying German language and culture, and at St. Petersburg State University in St. Petersburg, Russia, studying Russian language and literature. 

Turpin came back to the area and joined the voice faculty at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. But the thought of becoming a priest became harder to push away. 

Now, with his ordination around the corner, Turpin is grateful for everyone in his community — friends, family, priests and teachers — who helped him get to this moment.

“It will be a nice time to celebrate and be with a lot of people who helped me to get here,” Turpin said. “They helped me to realize the place to which God was calling me, which I never really would have suspected. You have that little tug in your heart, which somehow brings me here all those years later, which is an amazing joy and an amazing privilege.”