A priest who found God in the airport

These days Nicholas Azar dresses in black. But for many years, he wore a colourful uniform, a reflective vest. This was for his job as an airport attendant.


At the beginning, Nicholas Azar guided passengers of Sky Team Cargo toward the gates for departure. He was promoted throughout the company until he reached one of the most important positions, manager of finance. He has a masters in business, speaks six languages, and in addition to all of this, now he is a priest.

Nicholas Azar
"For many years I struggled with the possibility of becoming a priest. I enjoyed dating girls, I enjoyed dancing. I kept my mind busy with my work, with the youth group from the church."

Even though he had reached professional success and had built a strong future for himself, he was not all that happy.

Nicholas Azar
"One day two of my colleagues were talking, very animated about something fun. When I asked them what they had been talking about, they told me they had participated in church activities with other young people. I could not believe there was a church that could be so much fun."

He decided to see it with his own eyes. Nicholas found the church full of people his age. And he decided to help a group of teenagers from that church.

For business reasons he travelled all over the world. But the trip that changed his life was the World Youth Day in Paris in 1997.

Nicholas Azar
"I was impressed by the large number of Catholics in the world. Thousands and thousands of young people had gone to Paris to meet with the Pope, to be with him. I had never seen so many Catholics together. I had never been in a reunion of Catholics on a worldwide scale."

After that trip he realized that even though his involvement with the church was great and a prosperous future with his company awaited him, he knew there was something missing in his life. And he knew exactly what it was.

Nicholas Azar
"God calls each person to a specific type of work. I thought my place was in the corporate world, that is where I had fun, where I put all of my capabilities to use. But then I began to think perhaps God is calling me to do something else, although I did not think I was prepared to answer him."

The decision was not easy. After a lot of praying, he decided to leave the prosperous future that awaited him in the company, for which God was asking of him: to be a priest.

Nicholas Azar
"The day when I was going to submit my resignation was one of the hardest days of my life. I had worked there for almost 14 years to achieve this point in my career. In that moment, I knew when I sent my letter of resignation by fax, this piece of paper would disappear and go off to personnel, telling them that I was resigning and I was leaving my whole life behind to do the work God was asking me to do."

So that is what he did and now he says he is one of the happiest men on the earth. He was ordained a priest on July 29 of 2009 in his diocese of Atlanta, in the United States. And he studied theology in Rome. A big change for someone who dreamed of big responsibility with an airline.