A Chance Encounter with Sr. Leopolda

Father Lemuel Camacho, a former nursing supervisor and now a newly-ordained priest in the Diocese of Essex County, New Jersey, recounted how he came to the priesthood. During his 2008 pilgrimage to Fatima, RN Lemuel, who had been mulling a late transition to the priesthood, had his hands folded in prayer, looking for a sign – any small signal – from the Blessed Mother about his possible call to a priestly vocation. Down on bended knee in the Chapel of the Apparitions at the Our Lady of Fatima Shrine in Portugal, he asked Mary in an informal way, “What do you want me to do, Mother?” Then nurse Camacho rose up and started walking out of the Chapel of the Apparitions when, at the door, a religious sister, whom he had never met, unknowingly answered his question about vocation by asking him a question – “Are you the priest I’ve been waiting for?” “No, I am not,” nurse Camacho told the religious sister. When he visited, he was just dressed in jeans and a nice shirt but the museum curator thought he was a priest. Later on, before he left Fatima, he asked the religious sister whom he met at the door why she asked me that question. She replied, ‘Maybe you got your answer’. The nun was Sister Leopolda Ledesma. There in the prayerful majesty of Fatima, Registered Nurse Camacho took that seemingly random incident as the Blessed Mother’s sign that he should pursue the priesthood. Shortly after his return from the pilgrimage, the former nursing supervisor applied to the Paterson Diocese and in August 2009, Father Camacho began his priestly studies at Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University, South Orange.