St. Philomenas' Apostolate

Who We Are

In 2021, on the Feast of the Annunciation, St. Philomenas' Apostolate began with the purpose of helping new young pastors. The focus was on fatherhood, running an office, and evangelizing families. We started with two pastors and were working with over a dozen before long. We helped priests focus on their role as spiritual fathers, building relationships and trust to allow them to lead their parishioners through change and transformation. We worked with them to rebuild councils by rewriting charters to alter the focus and set higher expectations for members to practice and lead in the faith. We helped redesign offices to allow priests to be priests, not office workers. Lastly, we focused on ways to bring the families closer to the Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin Mary. While working closely with priests, three things became apparent. First, changing the culture would be absolutely necessary to develop authentically Catholic parishes; second, parents, especially fathers, are no longer equipped to pass on the Catholic faith; and lastly, men are mostly absent from the parish. This led us to alter our focus to helping priests be the father and leader of the parish, develop truly Catholic men and families capable of passing on the faith for generations, and create authentically Catholic culture in the Parish. It also led to our partnership with St. Joseph Society to build a boot camp where priests can equip men to lead their families in the faith and become leaders in the parish.

Our Founder

Tate Hilgefort is a Catholic husband and father of eleven children. He and his wife have always been active in spreading the faith at their parish. While attending Guardian Angels parish on the eastside of Cincinnati, they evangelized the parish by hosting family catechesis before football practices, leading efforts to begin an annual Corpus Christi procession, increasing hours of exposition, and running a Soup and Speakers series hosting priests from the nearby seminary to help deepen the faith of parishioners. While at Guardian Angels, the Hilgeforts were able to meet many of the seminarians, becoming a home away from home for many of them. These relationships led to regular priestly luncheons to discuss topics including reverent liturgy, evangelizing families, and building culture in the parish. Continuing to see the struggles of young pastors is what led our founder to begin St. Philmenas' Apostolate.

Why Philomena?

The apostolate is lovingly named after St. Philomena, wonderworker and favorite of St. John Vianney, and our founder's daughter Philomena. Below is the beginning of an he wrote for Homiletic and Pastoral Review that tells a little of her story and introduces a blueprint for converting parishes.

Last fall my wife was five months pregnant with our 11th child. We had already named her Philomena after the great wonder worker and favorite saint of St. John Vianney. This is when we found out that Philomena had a heart defect that would require surgery a few months after birth. We were told there was a 97% success rate, so we were optimistic. We chose the middle name after Blessed Pauline Marie Jaricot who also suffered from a life-threatening heart condition. At the urging of her friend St. John Vianney, she made the perilous journey to visit the relics of St. Philomena in Mugnano, Italy. Her miraculous healing in front of a packed church led to St. Philomena’s canonization just a few years later. The stars, or in this case the saints, seemed to be aligning, and we were very hopeful about Philomena’s chances.

Unfortunately, God had other plans. Her short ten weeks of life were spent in the ICU. We were told by one of the best children’s hospitals in the world that she was a difficult case. Day after day they discussed what could be done to help her, but nothing was ever done. While I sat with my daughter in the hospital those last days, I reflected on how the doctors talked about doing many things for Philomena, but instead they always waited, hoping for a better time. As they waited, she grew weaker and eventually it was too late to mend her ailing heart.

While I continued reflecting on her final days, it struck me how Philomena is a proper metaphor for our parishes today. She needed surgery to repair her heart so that it could pump blood to the rest of the members of her body. Without this, the members, in her case the lungs, could no longer function properly, and Philomena died a natural death. Many of our parishes, like Philomena, need heart surgery. They need our Eucharistic Lord placed at the heart of the parish, so that He may feed all members, ensuring they avoid spiritual death.

As I held our dying daughter in my arms, knowing she would soon be in heaven with our Lord and His Blessed Mother, I asked her to pray for three things. First and most obvious is our family, that we may spend eternity in heaven together. I also asked her to pray for all those who prayed for and thought about her. Finally, I asked her to pray for Holy Mother Church and especially our parish priests. I believe that it is our parish priests who are called to place our Eucharistic Lord at the center of our parishes, so that He may bring supernatural life to the Church and end this current crisis.  - Philomena, St. John Vianney, and a Blueprint for Converting Parishes

St. Philomena and our Philomena, pray for our priests