Dcn. Christian Ivandic, LC, to be Ordained to the Priesthood on April 29th, 2023

Biography

He was born on November 15,1988 in Germany. He entered the Bad Munstereiffel novititate in September 2088. After his religious profession he studied the humanities in Cheshire. In 2012 he began his baccalaureate in philosophy at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical Athenaeum. During the apostolic practices, he collaborated as a formation instructor at the Irish School in Mexico and as the ECYD assistant. He returned to Rome where he finished a degree in philosophy and his baccalaureate in theology. He is currently in the United States continuing his studies at the University of Notre Dame. 

Deacon Christian Ivandic, LC, will celebrate his first mass at 10:00 am, April 30th, 2023 at Santa Maria dell’Anima Catholic Church in Rome, Italy.

Vocational Testimony

I was born in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Germany, and grew up in the beautiful region of the Palatinate near France within a family of musicians. So, from very early on, I devoted myself to music, by attending numerous concerts and playing the piano. I made the exciting experience of performing in front of ever-growing audiences and in many halls and competitions on the national and international levels. I am certain that the experience of beauty through music led me already as a child to the conviction, a sudden realization, that there must be some transcendent, all-sustaining, and benevolent ground for it all. When listening, for instance, to Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, I simply “knew” that it couldn’t be that sooner or later everything just dissolved into meaningless nothing. Only later, when I became interested in philosophy as a teenager, did I realize that this aesthetic approach to God corresponded to what the scholastics called the via pulchritudinis.

Thus, faith, art, and philosophy have played an essential role throughout my life. Having been active in our home parish and in ECYD and Regnum Christi, I felt during my last high school years more and more God’s invitation and the desire to devote my life to the service of God and my brothers and sisters. So, after graduating from high school in the summer of 2008, I joined the Novitiate of the Legionaries of Christ in Bad Münstereifel, Germany.

During my years of formation, I lived two years in Cheshire, CT, studying humanities; two years in Mexico City, working at a school and doing youth work; and eight years in Rome, studying philosophy and theology.

I am currently studying for a Ph.D. in Theology at the University of Notre Dame, IN, and am particularly grateful that I have the opportunity to do campus ministry. As a priest, I hope to share in my ministry God’s gift of his triune love, to receive by giving in accordance with the evangelical logic that only those who lose their lives gain it (cf. Lk 17:33).

All are warmly invited to join us for the live broadcast of the Ordination Mass on Saturday, April 29th, at 10:00 am Rome time (4:00 am EDT, 1:00 am PDT),   here.