“The most obvious surprise was the realisation that there was such a thing as a call from God,” he said. “I had never believed in the idea of a call, thinking rather that the good priests I knew had simply chosen to be priests in the same way that people chose to be doctors and nurses, teachers and taxi drivers.

“However, after I returned from South Africa, I became aware of a niggling feeling, a random thought that would pop up every now and then: what about priesthood? This niggling feeling started popping up so frequently that I thought I would have been actively ignoring it if I did nothing about it. Then, with the help of the vocations director, I realised that this was indeed the way in which God had manifested His call to me.”