FEATURED SPEAKERS

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Father Wade Menezes, C.P.M.

Fr. Wade Menezes, CPM is a member of the Fathers of Mercy, a missionary preaching Religious Congregation based in Auburn, Kentucky. He is currently the Director of Vocations and Director of Seminarians for the Fathers of Mercy.

Fr. Wade has served as the Chaplain-in-Residence at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament of Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Hanceville, Alabama. While at the Shrine, Fr. Wade served as a daily Mass celebrant, homilist and confessor; he also gave spiritual conferences on specialized points of Catholic Christian doctrine to the many pilgrims who visit the Shrine. Both the Monastery and Shrine are affiliated with EWTN, the Eternal Word Television Network.

Fr. Wade has been a contributing writer for many publications including The National Catholic Register, Our Sunday Visitor, Catholic Faith and Family, and Lay Witness. Fr. Wade has also been a guest on several episodes of EWTN's "Mother Angelica Live" and "Life on the Rock" programs during which he discussed such topics as the sanctification of marriage and family life, vocations and the Sacred Liturgy. He has also hosted three televised series for EWTN, which have covered such topics as the necessity of the spiritual life, the commandments of Catholic family living, and the gospel of life vs. the culture of death. He is host of the EWTN segment series, The Crux of the Matter.

Tim Staples

Tim Staples was raised a Southern Baptist. Though he got away from the faith of his childhood during his teen years, he came back to faith in Christ in his late teens through Christian television and some friends in the Assemblies of God.

Tim decided to join the Marine Corps and during his four-year tour, he got involved in ministry in various Assembly of God communities. Immediately after his tour of duty, Tim would become a Youth Minister in an Assembly of God Community and later enroll in Jimmy Swaggart Bible College. During his final year in the Marines, Tim met a Marine who really knew his Faith and challenged Tim to study Catholicism from Catholic and historical sources. Having been challenged, Tim was determined to prove Catholicism wrong and ended up studying his way to the last place he thought he would ever end up…the Catholic Church.

Since his conversion in 1988, Tim spent six years in formation for the priesthood earning a degree in Philosophy from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook, PA. He then studied theology on a graduate level at Mt. St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md. for two years. Deciding that his calling was not to the priesthood, Tim left the seminary in 1994 and has been working in Catholic Apologetics and Evangelization ever since.