WATCH: 10-year-old tells Matt Walsh ‘God is calling me’ to become a priest

(LifeSiteNews) — A 10-year-old boy told Matt Walsh that he wants to be a priest because he is being called by God.

During a Turning Point USA college tour stop at Missouri State University, a boy named Bryce from Billings, Montana, told conservative Daily Wire hosts Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles that he wants to become a priest and asked for their advice.

“I want to be a priest when I grow up. I just want to ask, what would your advice be?” pic.twitter.com/zkhfk2c4Gt

— Turning Point USA (@TPUSA) April 29, 2026

“Don’t be a Jesuit” was the first response from Knowles, to the laughter of the audience. “No, there are good Jesuits sometimes,” he added.

Walsh asked the boy why he decided to become a priest.

“Because God’s calling me,” Bryce replied.

Knowles called his aspiration the “biggest white pill,” meaning a cause for hope.

“There are many moments when you work in politics where you feel jaded. You say, ‘All hope is lost. The culture is dying. No one has the right ideas anymore,’” Knowles said. “And then you meet a 10-year-old kid who says, ‘I want to serve God and be a priest,’ and you say, ‘Guys, we’re going to make it!’”

Walsh went on to give his advice, which was directed mostly to the audience.

“Continue doing what you’re doing right now. You’re answering the right question, which is, ‘What does God want for my life?’”

“Most adults, if you were to ask them what they do for a living, or how they live, what their lifestyle is, they’ll say something along the lines of, ‘Well, it’s what I want to do,’” Walsh said.

“But the real answer, what we should all be doing, what we should all be trying to discern, is not what we want to do, but, ‘Why has God put us here?’”

“God created all of us, which is an amazing fact. We’re all intentional creations of the Lord of the entire universe. The God that made by hand tens of billions of entire galaxies also created all of us. And he did that for each of us for a specific reason, to come into this world and do something.”

“And that thing is going to be different for everybody. And so our job first is to prayerfully discern what that thing is to ask God,” Walsh continued. “It’s like, ‘God I know what I want to do but God what do you want me to do?’”

The boy’s aspiration to become a priest is especially significant during a time when the number of Catholic priests and seminarians has been in decline worldwide.

In the U.S. in particular, the number of priests flatlined in 1965 after the Second Vatican Council and then began to plummet around 1985 as the Catholic population continued to explode. This suggests significant harm to vocations was inflicted by the changes to the liturgy and teaching of the faith initiated by the Council.

The vocational crisis seems to have significantly worsened during the pontificate of Francis. According to Catholic World News, after 1978, the number of seminarians peaked at 120,616 in 2011 and slightly declined to 120,051 in 2012. By the end of 2013, after Francis took office, they numbered 118,251 – dropping 1,800 in one year. 

By 2023, data showed an “uninterrupted” decline in the number of seminarians starting in 2013.

The SSPX, by contrast, the largest society of traditional Catholic priests, has seen a steady growth in its number of priests since its founding in 1970. The number of priests of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) has also grown at a mostly steady pace since it began as a break-off from the SSPX in 1988, albeit to a lesser degree.