Dominic Lawes was about midway through the first year of his professional career when he decided to pursue a vocation to the priesthood. ‘I’ve just got to do it,’ he thought. ‘If it’s not meant to be, I’m sure God will lead it that way, and if it is—which I think it is—I’ll just continue.’
Now in his seventh and final year of seminary life at Corpus Christi College, Deacon Dominic says his ‘yes’ to God has been confirmed for him ‘year after year’.
Born and raised in England, Deacon Dominic is the sixth of seven children. ‘I grew up in the small rural city of Salisbury in Wiltshire, the southwest region of England, near Stonehenge. Lots of people know Stonehenge,’ he says.
‘I was born into a lovely Catholic family. I’m one of seven—three brothers, three sisters—and I was raised to pray,’ he says. ‘We prayed together growing up, and my parents had the faith. They were very strong, and they believed in it.’
The centrality of faith was impressed upon the Lawes children from a young age. He remembers his parents saying that they’d rather ‘he was poor, but a believer.’
‘And so right through my childhood, [we] went to youth camps, we had youth groups, and we always used to talk about the faith, even among my siblings.’
Two of his brothers are priests in England, and when his first brother went into the seminary, he started to consider the possibility of the priesthood. ‘When my first [brother] went into the seminary, that sort of dispelled any myths that I had that the priests were these sort of weird people that just prayed all day and didn’t really have a life. So I started thinking about it too.’ He was 16 at the time, and it would take another few years and a move to another continent before he decided to pursue this calling.
‘I moved to Australia when I was 18. My mum’s Australian. I may have been born and raised in England, but I always had that Australian stock, as you might call it, in my life.
‘And so when I went to university, I kept on growing in my faith, kept on growing in my sense of independence from my family, and that helped me mature in that sense,’ he says.
These small connections … from a small seed, they grow like a flower.
At university, he studied accounting and finance, which he enjoyed. ‘I loved it. It’s what my mind is made for, that kind of thing.’ During his studies he also attended events like Theology at the Pub and became heavily involved with the student group Catholics of One Spirit Down Under (COSDU).
‘I got to know a lot of people through those events and being connected to the youth group there [COSDU],’ he says. ‘That’s a very international-based community, but likewise, that’s the Church.’
His discernment journey was also helped along by local priest Fr Andrew McCarter, who Deacon Dominic met during his early years in Melbourne. ‘I was very new to Melbourne in 2015 and I didn’t know anyone really. He was the first priest that I got to know in Australia, and he showed me this community [of] Melbourne and what we have to offer. ‘And so, these small connections … from a small seed, they grow like a flower.’
After completing his degree, he entered the workforce but couldn’t shake a sense of wanting ‘something more’.
‘Over the years it was just a growing sense that I was called to something more, and a growing sense I couldn’t really do anything else other than become a priest.’