priests
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PHOTOS COURTESY OF FATHER LEO PATALINGHUG
From break dancing
to breaking bread:
A lesson in sharing God’s gifts
FATHER LEO
Patalinghug
(center) and
companions
put on a Star
Wars half-time
show during
a vocation-themed
basketball
game that
pitted a parish
team against
a team of
seminarians
and priests.
As a priest Father Leo Patalinghug often celebrates the sacraments and
gives presentations on faith issues. But he’s equally at home on the dance
floor, cooking a big meal, or practicing martial arts.
BY B ACK WHEN he was an award- HENRIETTA winning break dance competitor, GOMES Leo Patalinghug hardly seemed
the type who’d turn out to be a priest.
He was a busy guy whose considerable
energy was poured into sports and dancing. He used to lack the time or inclination to sit and ponder his life calling.
But then the Catholic Church has
a long history of unlikely sorts turning
toward and thriving in ministry.
“If God can use me, there’s hope
for the world,” says Patalinghug with a
smile. Certainly he brings plenty of tal-
Henrietta Gomes is a staff writer for the Arlington
Catholic Herald of the Arlington, Virginia diocese.
ent to the table. In addition to his skill
on the dance floor (he once belonged to
the “Breakanics,” who won Baltimore’s
best break dancing award in 1983),
Patalinghug has black belts in various
martial arts, including tae kwon do and
arnis, a system of Filipino martial arts.
And if that’s not enough, his love
for cooking, which he developed as a
seminarian in Rome, propelled him to
begin production of a TV show, Grace
Before Meals: Recipes for Family Life, in
the hope of strengthening families as
they cook and eat together. He has also
published a book by the same name.
While his life blends many passions, nowadays all of them lead back to
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VISION 2009
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