St. Augustine, Fla. – Two men join the ranks of the clergy of the Diocese of St. Augustine when they are ordained May 12 by Bishop Felipe J. Estévez at a 10 a.m. Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine. The public is welcome to attend the celebration.

The journeys that led them to the priesthood are very different, but the result is the same. They both answered God’s call to the priesthood.

John Sollee grew up in the San José neighborhood of Jacksonville and graduated from The Bolles School. Martin Ibeh grew up in an impoverish Nigerian town where going to school sometimes meant working in the teacher’s fields.

Though they have taken very different paths, they both studied at St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary in Boynton Beach, Fla.

Both men grew up in devout Catholic families. Sollee’s great-grandfather was one of the members of Immaculate Conception parish who petitioned the bishop to establish a parish in what was then South Jacksonville. His great-grandfather was an altar server at the first Mass at Assumption parish in 1913. Sollee was the emcee at the centennial celebration.

Sollee attended San José Catholic School and after graduating from Bolles enrolled at the University of Florida majoring in finance and English. 

Ibeh was one of eight children growing up in the town of Amiri in southeast Nigeria.

The family walked to 8 a.m. Mass on Sundays five miles away. The trek could take two hours if they had young children in tow. But sometimes, Ibeh said, they ran.

In the evenings, the family would open their house to the neighborhood for a “block rosary.”

“We learned to pray the Catholic way,” Ibeh said. “That’s how I got the inspiration to become a priest. Our parish priest would come to visit us from time to time and encouraged us to pray. And he shared the gospel with us.”  

Ibeh attended public school. Teachers are poorly paid, so the students are expected to help them. “We had to bring them firewood, and if you didn’t you’d be flogged,” Ibeh said. “Sometimes we worked on their farms.”  

Two men from such different backgrounds each heard the call.

For Sollee, it began in college during a summer in New York City, where he was studying screenwriting. Though he had been raised Catholic, Sollee said he never felt grounded in the faith, so when high school and college teachers raised questions about some of the church’s darker chapters like the Crusades and the Inquisition, Sollee lost trust in the church.

“I started asking, why am I part of this church that has done all these terrible things? It became an evil institution I didn’t want to be part of.”

He began reading philosophy. The Germans, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Arthur Schopenhauer were favorites. By the time he went to New York, Sollee said, “I was very much agnostic, on the verge of atheism.”

Life was good. He could study and play all summer in New York. He had a girlfriend, and they were talking about getting married. His screenwriting class was helping Sollee figure out how to pursue a career in the film industry.  

Then his girlfriend broke up with him.

“I was reclusive, not really talking to my friends. I was in a dark place,” Sollee said.

He’d go to Central Park every day to work on the screenplay and brood about his life. One day in the park he began sobbing uncontrollably.

“My life was such a mess. I didn’t know what had happened. I used to be such a happy-go-lucky guy,” Sollee said. “I needed to find some peace and my first thought was to go to St. Patrick Cathedral.  

“I sat in the back during Mass. It’s hard to describe. It was the most peaceful experience. I wasn’t paying attention to Mass. Everything felt right with the world like I used to feel sitting on my dad’s lap watching TV. I started going to daily Mass.”  

Sollee calls it his “reversion experience.” He reverted to the Catholic faith.  

“The Lord turned my life around in a big way. Experiencing the loneliness and emptiness that comes with running from God, I turned back to him and through his infinite mercy and gracefully embraced my Catholic faith.”

When he returned to UF, he joined the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) and started a Bible study. “I channeled that experience of God’s mercy,” Sollee said.

It was his senior year, and he began applying for jobs. He was offered his dream job at Deloitte & Touche, making $60,000 plus a signing bonus. As tempting as that was, Sollee said what he really wanted to do was be a FOCUS missionary, a job that paid about $10,000, most of which he would have to raise himself.  

The FOCUS missionaries live in community. “I didn’t feel isolated. The difference was huge. I felt alive with FOCUS. I figured I could always go back to banking, but I needed to be with peers who are running toward Christ.  

“I developed a life of prayer and chastity,” Sollee said. “That’s when I heard that still small voice that said, ‘be my priest.’ It got more and more powerful.”

Ibeh knew as a young boy that he wanted to be a priest like the ones who would visit his family. But they were poor and couldn’t afford to send him to seminary.  

“My father encouraged me. We don’t have the money, but he trusted that if it were the will of God, it would become a reality,” Ibeh said.

Another problem was his education, which is best described as erratic.

In primary school, Ibeh and the other students often worked in the fields for their teachers in exchange for classroom time. But in high school, attacks from neighborhood thugs forced the schools to lock the gates.

“We didn’t learn much,” Ibeh said.

But he wanted to go to college, so his older brothers went to work in the city and sent money home for his education. Ibeh majored in English and Christian religious studies at a college of education. Then he earned a bachelor’s degree in information science at a university and worked as a librarian.

Ibeh said he still felt called to the priesthood but couldn’t afford to go to the minor seminary, which was a requirement to be accepted for ordination by the diocese. His only option was to

join a religious order. He entered the Society of Our Mother of Peace in 2007. After four years of formation, they sent him to their monastery in St. Louis, Mo.

Finally, he could go to seminary. He graduated with a bachelor’s in philosophy from Kenrick Glennon Seminary. He heard from the vocations director that the Diocese of St. Augustine was looking for seminarians. 

“I didn’t know anything about St. Augustine, but I had prayed that the Lord would want me to serve,” Ibeh said. “I’ve been at St. Vincent de Paul for three years. The Lord gave me the grace to endure and persevere and embrace my vocation with joy.”

They have one more thing in common:

Ibeh will be the first priest from his village; Sollee will be the first priest from Bolles.

After their ordination, Father John Sollee will serve as a parochial vicar at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Jacksonville and Father Martin Ibeh will serve as a parochial vicar at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine.

CONTACT: Kathleen Bagg
(904) 262-1705/office
(904) 434-3909/cell