Catholic reverend aims to portray priests as 'real human beings' in a realistic, modern way in new movie
Father Stephen Fichter explained that the church is often portrayed in an 'idealized manner' in movie. He said his goal with the film was to provide, an authentic and modern look beyond the seminary walls.
A new movie detailing the hardships of becoming a priest aims to give everyday Americans a behind-the scenes look at life in the priesthood, according to Father Stephen Fichter, who wrote the movie based on many of his own life experiences.
Trinity's Triumph is Catholic priest Father Stephen Fichter's first feature-length film, which details the story of three young men who enter the seminary guided by a wise mentor, where they are forced to decide what God is asking of them and the path they want to take. The movie, which is now available to stream, features actors Joe Morton, Young Mazino, Joshua Wills, Adriel Irizzary, Narci Regina and Melissa Bolona and was written by Father Stephen, along with Kathe Carson and Michael Wickman.
Fichter told Fox News Digital that the movie aims to give the public a look at priests as part of the everyday landscape, as people who struggle like everyone else.
"I find most people, even if they're churchgoing Catholics, see the priest on Sunday," he explained. "If you don't go to church that often, you might just see him at a funeral or a wedding or baptism ... But what do you know about that person?"
"What we were trying to do in this movie was to allow people to see us for the real human beings that we are with all of our faults and failings, but also with all of our zeal and dedication and desire to serve the people," he added. "It's really meant to be that realistic look at the priesthood as it is today."
Fichter said oftentimes in movies, the church is portrayed in an idealized manner that doesn't really fit the modern world, which he said he tried to avoid with the movie. Instead, he said he wanted to provide a realistic look inside the rectory wall to see priests, as the real human beings that they are.
"I find what I like about filmmaking is that you can reach a much broader audience," he said. "The books that I have written, I'm not even sure if my siblings have ever read them. My older sister told me my first book was a cure for insomnia."
"If you want to reach out to a broader audience, I do think that's where filmmaking can really reach out to a broader population than just people who had read some of my research books," he added.
He explained that a lot of the movie is autobiographical with other featured characters based on people and experiences he had going through seminary.
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"There are real things that either happened to me or to my friends or to other people that I'm acquainted with" and "everything in the movie has a real life touch point to it," he said.
Father Stephen also discussed how rewarding it is to be apart of the most critical moments in people's lives including when people are born, when they're married, even when they die. However, he said the sacrifices of the vocation don't come without their drawbacks.
"As priests, we're really deeply involved in people's lives, which I just thoroughly enjoy, and I thank God for calling me to this, [but] it doesn't mean that every day is great," he said. "There are days where you get sad. There are days where you feel frustrated. There's days you feel like maybe you're not making as much of a difference as you had intended to make. Then there's other days where you just downright get lonely sometimes, and the movie also addresses that reality, that as a priest, we're human beings like everyone else."
"We were created to love and to be loved and yet, we don't have a wife and children and what the vast majority of other men would have in their lives to bring them comfort and peace," he added.
But, for any young man considering the priesthood, Fichter said his original intent with the movie was to present a movie with real life characters that young men could see themselves represented by, which might encourage them to enter seminary and give the vocation a try.
"We just have to get the word out there a lot more," he said. "We want to get a lot more eyes on the film and hopefully inspire the next generation of young men to consider the call to serve God and his people."
From 2014 to 2021, a report commissioned by the Vocation Ministry found that there was a 24% decline in total priestly ordinations per year and while Father Stephen said it's too soon to see if the movie will have any effects those numbers, he said it would be "an awesome thing."
In 2022, the total number of ordinations in the U.S. was 451. Just two years prior, in 2020, there were 495, which Fichter described as "definitely concerning."
"We would love to have more priests, but also as a researcher, I've also learned to take a larger look at that [data]," he explained. "Sometimes we talk about a shortage of priests in the United States, and one of our measures is to say, how many Catholics are there per priest. So at one stage there might have been 1,000 Catholics per priest. Now we're closer to 2,000 Catholics per priest."
"In the United States, that feels like a shortage, it feels like things are really moving in the wrong direction," he added. "But if you go to other parts of the world, if you go to Brazil and you go to Mexico, which are very large Catholic countries, the ratio is actually about 10,000 to 12,000 Catholics per one priest, so even how bad we're doing here compared to other places we're 5 or 6 times better."
Fichter also pointed to the sexual abuse crisis that has plagued the church in recent decades as another major factor in the declining number of young men choosing to become priests.
"It affected me deeply," Father Stephen said. "It made me cry so profoundly and for so long to think a priest, a brother priest of mine, could not only break his vow, but to do it in a way that really hurt a child … is just unconscionable."
"If you've been a teenager from 2004 to today, the last 20 years, when you hear the Catholic Church, it's almost synonymous with the clergy sexual abuse crisis," he added. "I think that's definitely affected the younger generation and yet the reality we know is that the vast majority of priests do not molest children. The vast majority of these are really good men for all of our faults and failings and our weaknesses."
He added that many young people would likely have a hard time separating the church and the negative drama that has surrounded it in recent years, which he said is unfortunate, but likely a large factor for the loss in trust and credibility of the Catholic Church.
"In the world today, those make headlines and rightfully so, because they're so scandalous and so sad and the damage that they caused to these children, the long-term damage to their families and their communities, it's devastating," he added. "We've done so much work in the last 20 years to really screen our candidates better, to put in all of these safeguards around all the children that are in our care, all of our schools, all of our parishes, which thank God the cases now have diminished substantially."
"I'm hopeful that with all of the progress that we've made and the improvements that have come about, that in the future with movies like ours, perhaps young priests, we could turn that curve around and attract more young people to make the sacrifice to be a priest," he said.