With a rosary in his hand and the priesthood on his mind, Emerson Wells, a Louisville native, crossed the finish line of the 129th Boston Marathon on April 21.
“I was using the race as an opportunity to pray for vocations and the priesthood,” the 25-year-old seminarian for the Archdiocese of Louisville said in a recent interview.
He offered each mile of the 26.2-mile race for a specific intention related to the priesthood, including a mile for each seminarian of the archdiocese; Father Linebach, the vicar for vocations; Archbishop Shelton J. Fabre; the priests in his life and for an increase in vocations to the priesthood for the archdiocese.
Wells finished 449th overall out of more than 32,000 runners with a time of 2:35:20 — two hours, thirty-five minutes and 20 seconds — a personal record. That’s an average pace of five minutes and 55 seconds per mile.
The April race was only his second marathon. He finished in sixth place in his first — the Flying Pig Marathon held in Cincinnati in May of 2024 — which qualified him for the race in Boston.
Although the 26.2-mile distance may be new to Wells, running isn’t.
‘I was using the race as an opportunity to pray for vocations and the priesthood.’
— Emerson Wells, seminarian
In second grade, he joined Hite Elementary School’s cross-country team, and continued to compete at Westport Middle School, Eastern High School and into college at Western Kentucky University before stepping away from the sport, he said.
Running provided a sense of “stability” during a time “when my faith wasn’t important to me” and “kept me out of trouble,” he said.
Pope St. John Paul II called sports a “training ground of virtue,” he noted. “The Lord used it to prepare me” for the seminary, he said.
After a brief two-year hiatus from the sport, Wells began running again, shortly before entering the seminary.
“I keep coming back to running,” Wells said.
Finding time to train for a marathon while attending seminary is no easy feat, he said. Wells attends Mount St. Mary’s Seminary of the West in Cincinnati.
“Our mornings start at 6:30 a.m. and end at 9:15 p.m.,” so he has to be intentional about finding time during the day to train, he said.
But seminary comes before training, he added. “There are more important things in life, and that’s what I’m ultimately running towards — the priesthood. That comes first.”
Wells hopes to run another marathon in the fall, pending his seminary schedule.
“My prayer right now is, ‘If this is something you want me doing, bless it,’ ” he said.
