'A fruitful blessing'
By Anne Constable
The New Mexican

April 7, 2007
Congregation embraces a married father of four who, with Rome’s approval, will become a Catholic priestWhen Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan celebrated Mass last month at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church in Rio Rancho, a slim, dark-haired man in military fatigues read the lesson from the Old Testament.

"Your people don't seem to mind,'' Sheehan later remarked to Monsignor Douglas Raun, the parish's pastor. "If Rome approves, my people will accept it,'' Raun replied.

The lector that day was Jeffrey Whorton, an Army captain and former Episcopal priest -- and the married father of four -- who is seeking to become an ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church under a 27-year-old program approved by the Vatican. the rest