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New vocations are found online
Toronto Catholic and entrepreneur Michael Smolders hosted Fr. Adam Pantaleo, an associate pastor at Merciful Redeemer Parish in Mississauga as the second guest on his family's new podcast The Collar, which delves into the mystery of Catholic priesthood.
The Collar
August 31, 2026
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Nearly six months since it debuted on March 21 with a long-form conversation featuring then Archdiocese of Toronto vocations director Fr. Matthew McCarthy, The Collar podcast has emerged as a significant success story.
Lay apostle and entrepreneur Michael Smolders’ entertaining and illuminating long-form conversations with Catholic priests have quickly vaulted from around 15,000 views in the first two episodes to 188,000 and 210,000 by interviews four and five.
The guest featured in the fifth installment, the most popular of the nine released to date, was Fr. Stephen Bruzzese. The pastor at St. Denis Parish in St. Catharines, Ont., relayed a deeply emotional account of how his path to the priesthood was only made possible by his birth mother deciding at age 18 to first say yes to life and then by entrusting her newborn boy to an adoptive family.
Strong viewership and subscriber figures across social media encourage Smolders, but he wants The Collar to transcend beyond an awareness campaign and inspire vocational discernment.
“It's beautiful that lots of people are watching the videos, but a young man watching a video and hearing a priest’s story is not why I started The Collar. It was to get that young man actually to go and talk to a vocations director,” said Smolders.
He needed a refined online marketing engine for The Collar to realize its ultimate purpose.
“Prayers to Our Lady and divine providence raining down” is owed the credit, said Smolders, for him meeting Tim Watkins, the founder of Messenger Eagle Communications, a Catholic fundraising and communications consulting firm founded in 2013, and a division of the Maryland Catholic’s 38-year-old Renegade Communications media company.
Messenger Eagle is inspired by the birth name of St. Juan Diego, Cuauhtlatoatzin, which translates to “talking eagle” or “one who speaks like an eagle.” This name was fitting for the Indigenous Mexican saint as he told the world about the four apparitions granted to him by Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1531.
Smolders and Watkins quickly learned over the course of several conversations that a collaborative relationship would uplift their respective digital ministries.
Messenger Eagle will be empowered to accelerate The Collar’s growth and deepen its footprint by meeting men where they are online and stirring them with an authentic and purpose-driven call to action, an objective Watkins said is essential.
“If you're not out in the digital world getting in front of people, you're not going to be seen by people,” said the business strategist and filmmaker. “It has gone from being a small piece of the puzzle to a large piece of the puzzle, especially with our men who spend six to eight hours a day on digital devices. (It’s about) getting in front of them in a creative way to kind of shock them or hit the right nerve in them to get them to say, ‘yeah, I could do better as a man.’ ”
The brand has already achieved multi-year success at catalyzing priestly formation within the Archdiocese of Boston. Fr. Eric Cadin, Boston’s vocations director, lauded what Messenger Eagle has brought to the table over the past four years.
“With this support, we're not just seeing more men entering the seminary — we're seeing better-prepared candidates from the start,” said Cadin. “The combination of filtering, personalized outreach and analytics has brought a level of efficiency I could never achieve on my own. It's allowed me to focus my energy on men who are serious, well-disposed and ready to discern. It's been a game-changer for our vocations work.”
Watkins and Smolders both share a conviction that parishes and dioceses thriving on the vocational front energize the parish priest as the good seeds being planted inspire them to speak more positively from the pulpit, and those optimistic messages excite the people in the pews.
Smolders drew attention to how Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Leo XIV are among the pontiffs in the last half century who have been calling for a new evangelization and that the digital world is the new mission field. Speaking about his home country of Canada, he shared how there are bishops and priests open to harnessing new technological approaches to inspire the faithful, but there are others still committed to the older methods of growing vocations, such as talks from the pulpit.
“Well, the parishioners are not young men. The parishioners are older people who are at the end of their vocation,” said Smolders. “And where are the (young) men? Where are the men hearing about the faith? Where are the men learning about our Lord and the sacraments? They're learning them on YouTube. They're learning on their Instagram feeds. And so, we are seeing that there are some really great vocations directors and bishops out there who are saying, ‘yes, I get it. I want to get onto the screens as well.’ ”
Smolders added that bishops on board with what The Collar and Messenger Eagle are trying to achieve will also benefit from access to quantitative data that helps them adjudge the effectiveness of their vocational marketing strategies.
Watkins added that it is the methods boasting measurable impacts that inspire robust donations.
“The sophisticated donors that are giving appreciable money are no longer just giving money out of duty. They're giving it for results,” he said.
Learn more at thecollar.org and messengereagle.org/vocations.
(Amundson is an associate editor and writer for The Catholic Register.)
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