Harry Hartigan jokes that his is not "your grandma's Catholic Church." Hartigan isn't your typical religious leader, either.
After a diverse career, including 10 years as a toy buyer; eight as a flight attendant; nearly two decades as a paralegal, and years as a project manager, the 70-year-old great-grandfather is answering a lifelong call.
Today, Hartigan will be ordained as a priest of the liberal St. Theresa's Catholic Apostolic Church in North America. His ex-wife, Eileen Finn, will serve as the ordination's cantor. His three grown children also have roles in the ceremony.
"Can you imagine at this age? I could be sitting on the beach," Hartigan said with a laugh, sipping tea at a coffee shop in his Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis. "It's a major milestone in my life."
When he thinks about it, though, he's been ministering since childhood.
A Chicago native raised Irish Catholic, he served mass every day as an altar boy. He "scrubbed floors in the convent," and attended Catholic high school.
He married at 21 and divorced 18 years later, when he came out as gay.
"People who are LGBT are not welcomed in a lot of churches," he said.