“Sport is built on hope – hope of a good season, a good game, a good play … In Sport, we encounter the beauty and blessings of God’s creation.”
- Rev. Michael Bartholomew ’03, “Sports, Faith, and the Jubilee Year of Hope”Numbers matter, especially when it comes to athletics. In a given contest, we pick winners and losers according to the numbers they generate during said contest, be they tallied in points, times, or something else entirely, and any discussion of athletic achievement must include a quantitative aspect in order to be taken seriously.
As a champion masters race walker, Rev. Michael Bartholomew ’03 can tell you all about the numbers that matter in his life, but as pastor of four Roman Catholic parishes on the North Fork of Long Island, he’s also acutely aware that those numbers represent both the seeds of hope and the fruit of the blessings he’s received from God.
“My whole life has been about hope,” he said. “You never know what God has in store for you.”
2 pounds, 10 ounces
Born three months premature, Bartholomew weighed only 2 pounds, 10 ounces when he came into the world. He was diagnosed with hydrocephalus, a condition in which cerebrospinal fluid builds up within the brain to a dangerous or deadly degree, and the surgical implantation of a pressure-relieving shunt both saved his life and ruled out any hope of participating in contact sports. While growing up in Levittown, New York, on Long Island, he fell in love with distance running and joined both the cross country and track teams at St. Anthony’s High School, a college preparatory school run by the Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn.
“The Franciscan brothers who taught at and who founded St. Anthony’s High School had a tremendous impact on me,” he said.
24 countries
In 1992, Bartholomew’s mother, a high school Latin teacher, took him to Rome, which sparked an interest in international travel that led him to visit 24 countries by the time he turned 24. A trip to St. Petersburg during the aftermath of the fall of communism inspired him to pursue a degree in international business, and an NCAA visit at Scranton with then-cross country coach John “Hoppy” Hopkins and the men’s and women’s cross country teams convinced Bartholomew that Scranton would be the right place for him.
“Hoppy was very good to me,” he said. “I loved being part of a team.”
50 km
As a distance runner, Bartholomew was built for endurance, not speed.
“The farther I go, the better I am,” he said.
Although he loved running on Scranton’s cross country team, a series of injuries ended his running career after the first race of his sophomore year. Recognizing his dedication to the team and the sport, Hopkins allowed him to coach, which brought Bartholomew a great deal of satisfaction.
“I loved coaching,” he said. “It was even more fun for me than competing.”
Still determined to compete, he went walking with an Olympian race walker from Long Island who encouraged him to train for the United States 50 km team, and, after placing 12th in the nation in the 50 km after only eight weeks of training, he suddenly had a legitimate shot at making the U.S. Olympic team.
“My goal was to be the last man in the Olympic stadium,” he said. “It wasn’t, ‘I’m gonna win a medal.’ That was not it. It was, ‘Make the U.S. Olympic team.’”
One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church
Ever since high school, Bartholomew had been wrestling with the idea of religious life, but he also followed his secular ambitions. He studied abroad in Spain through the University, became fluent in Spanish, landed an international internship, and even trained at the Olympic training center in Madrid. In short, he thought he had his life’s path all figured out.
“I loved being overseas,” he said. “I really felt like, ‘All right. I just want to live overseas and be done with it. Make the U.S. OIympic team, then change my citizenship, marry a Spanish girl, and be done with it,’ but life didn’t quite happen that way.
“I still felt like God was calling me to something, I just didn’t know what.”
That began to change when he went to church the night before an interview with the London branch of the company he’d interned with in Spain. As he quietly prayed for a successful interview, he heard a woman weeping loudly behind him; while he was initially annoyed with her, his attitude soon changed.
“In that moment, I felt God was like, ‘Someone should help her, and that probably is you,’” he said.
At Christmas Eve Mass that same year, he heard the phrase, “If Christmas is all about these trees, then something is wrong,” and something resonated within him. After praying on the matter, he felt God was calling him to the priesthood, and he entered the seminary soon afterward.
“I kind of entered one foot in, one foot out, just hoping God would say, ‘Just kidding – you can go back to work,’ and that didn’t happen,” he said. “Every day, every week, every month, every year, it was where I was supposed to be.”
While in the seminary, he continued to train and race, posting his personal best times and best placings. In 2005 and 2006, he competed on the U.S. national team in the 50 km and even placed sixth in the country in 2006, but the Olympic trials remained elusive. In 2010, he raced as a newly ordained priest after sickness and injury had interrupted his training, and he felt it was time for a change.
“I knew I had to stop,” he said. “I had to focus on being a priest and helping my people, and so I did that.”
Bartholomew’s fluency in Spanish and the administrative skills he sharpened at the University proved to be major assets in his ministry, leading him to become the youngest pastor in the history of the Diocese of Rockville Centre at the age of 33. Today, as the pastor of St. Agnes of Greenport, Sacred Heart Parish – Our Lady of Good Counsel Church, St. Patrick’s Church and Our Lady of Ostrabama, he remains focused on the well-being of his parishioners by seeing himself as a spiritual coach in the great contest we call life.
“My goal as a priest, really, is to have people become saints, friends of God,” he said. “I’m coaching up my parishes to try to get them to understand how much God loves them, how much they can grow in their knowledge and love of God, and their love of one another.”
2:17:32
After an extended break from competition, Bartholomew returned to race walking in 2018 on the masters athletics circuit, a class of events for athletes 35 and older, at the World Masters Athletics Championships in Malaga, Spain, where he found himself representing his country on the world stage.
“I got to be there with my dad and wear a USA shirt,” he said. “It was a dream come true.”
Since then, Bartholomew has continued to compete as a masters athlete, and he even participated in the 2024 Olympic trials in the mix marathon relay, which he cites as another “dream come true.” All told, he’s racked up seven national titles and set three American records in his age group since returning to competition, including a half marathon American record time of 2:17:32 the first time he raced at that distance in January 2026.
“We’re given various gifts and talents, and if we’re able to use those gifts and talents for the greater glory of God, a Jesuit phrase, ultimately there, we recognize how much God has blessed,” he said. “Someone like myself, all the medical stuff, and all the ups and downs and whatever, to be able to still say I can get an American record, that I’m a national champion … I recognize God’s blessings in my life.”
True to form, Bartholomew has his sights set upon qualifying for the Olympic trials in the half marathon in 2027, proving that hope truly springs eternal.
“You never know what God has in store for you,” he said.
