David Madden

I graduated from Exeter University with a 2,1 in Economics and Politics and began a career in investment banking. After several years in banking I went to live in Paris for a year to take a break from working, on average, 14 hours a day. After returning from Paris I went back into finance for a period and was then selected to be a director of a charitable trust in the UK which worked for children with cancer and also raised substantial funds for peace initiatives in Palestine and Israel. My work for the trust became my life; my faith has always given me a sense that unless we have a passion and love for the mission of Christ's Divine Love our work cannot attain its full potential - I believe we are called not to be average in that love but to be symbols of its full reality. I realised, after 12 years of hiding from it, that my sense of call to the priesthood would never be assuaged by a successful academic experience, nor by a successful career, nor by a secular life full of meaning and depth. In sum, I realised that all that I was belonged to Christ and that my life was His, to make me his servant in the service of all who seek Christ.