Author of more than 40 books, founder of the Fatima Family  Apostolate and creator of the quarterly magazine Immaculate Heart  Messenger, he has taken more than 2,000 young people on pilgrimage retreats  to Fatima. The South Dakotan spoke recently with Register features correspondent  Tim Drake.

Drake: Where did you grow up? Tell me a little bit about your  family.

Father Fox: I grew up as the youngest of eight children  on a farm near Watertown, S.D. We had everything … pigs, sheep, milk cows and  horses, but we raised primarily potatoes. My father died shortly after I was  born, leaving my mother with the children. Not long after, the Depression years  came. We grew up under very poor circumstances, but we were happy because we  didn’t know any better.

My mother said to me, when she was dying, that there were many  times when she did not know what food she would put on the table for the next  meal, but she always managed.

How did you come to be a priest? Was there a specific event  that led to your vocation?

I do not remember ever not wanting to be a priest.

I can recall wanting to be a priest even before I started first  grade. My mother put the thought in my mind. She mentioned it only two times in  my life, but it stuck.

I remember when my mother would go into town to get groceries,  and she would let me be alone for an hour in town. Every time, without  exception, I would go the Catholic Church and genuflect and spend time before  Jesus. Even then I could feel the Real Presence of Jesus in the tabernacle. That  drew me to the priest-hood.

While every vocation comes from God, I believe that a sincere  priestly vocation comes to us through Mary. Her “yes” gave us the High Priest,  so she is the mother of vocations.

Archbishop William O’Brady ordained me in 1955, at the Cathedral  of Sioux Falls.

How did you learn about the faith in rural South  Dakota?

We didn’t have a Catholic high school in Watertown, but our  family did receive the National Catholic Register. Msgr. William Smith used to  have beautiful articles explaining the faith. I would wait for it to arrive in  the mail every Tuesday and I would read it cover to cover.

After high school, I was among more than 350 freshman to begin  studies at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn. In those days St. John’s  taught the traditional Catholic faith. All students were required to take a  religious placement exam. Most of the other students had had four years of  previous religious instruction at St. John’s or other places; I had lacked  formal religious education during my high-school years.

After the examination I was given a sheet of paper with the  number 17 on it and was told to meet with my advisor. I still remember seeing  that number and wondering how I could have done so poorly. “How could I have  gotten only 17% correct?” I asked myself. The advisor, however, corrected my  error. He said, “No, this is very good. You scored 17th from the top of all the  students.”

I instantly responded, “That’s because all four years of high  school I read the National Catholic Register.”

You were asked by the Vatican to start the International  Fatima Family Apostolate, weren’t you?

In 1974, I made a pilgrimage to Fatima and I asked Our Lady, “What do you want of me?” Those were always the first words spoken by Lucia when  Our Lady appeared to her. I had the overwhelming conviction that Our Lady wanted  me to teach the fullness of the Catholic faith to young people wherever I could  using the Fatima message as the vehicle in my instruction.

It wasn’t long after that that I developed a Fatima youth  apostolate that spread widely and quickly.

In 1976 I felt that I was being called to conduct youth retreats  to Fatima for teen-agers and young adults. Over the past 25 years I have brought  more than 2,000 young people to Fatima on pilgrimages. I estimate that, of those  young people, about 200 are becoming, or are already, priests. More than 20 have  become contemplative Carmelites, one of whom co-founded the first Carmelite  monastery in South Dakota located across the street from my parish. Many others  joined other religious communities.

Cardinal John Wright, who was the Prefect of the Pontifical  Congregation for the Clergy, heard about my work and was reading articles I was  writing in the National Catholic Register, and he began phoning and writing  me.

He encouraged me to continue writing on catechetics and asked me  to write a catechism for young people. That catechism is still in print under  the title Jesus, Light of the World, and has been revised to incorporate  features of the new universal Catechism.

In 1985, the Pontifical Council for the Laity wrote, encouraging  me to form a Fatima apostolate independent of what I had been doing. This new  apostolate became the Fatima Family Apostolate (FFA), dedicated to the  sanctification of the family. Within two years its charter was endorsed by the  Pontifical Council for the Family. After I spoke at the first International  Fatima Pastoral Symposium at the request of the Bishop of Fatima, the FFA became  known internationally.

Every diocese has a family-life committee. Why is a Fatima  Family Apostolate needed?

Every diocese is doing good work as regards family life;  however, they are dealing with the problems. The Fatima Family Apostolate exists  to prevent family problems from arising. Fatima family prayer and study groups  meet monthly and sometimes more often.

We provide all of the tools and the structure for what families  can do during those meetings. Our “bible” on family life is Pope John Paul II’s  document Familiaris Consortio [the 1981 apostolic exhortation on the  family], in which the Pope calls for families-to-families apostolates.

Good Catholic families, because of our secular society, often  feel very alone. Getting Catholic families to meet at least monthly in support  groups of five to six couples allows them to study, pray and share their  problems with one another.

You became a priest at a time when there was an abundance of  priests. Do you have any thoughts on our present vocations crisis?

One of the problems today is that the faith is not being lived  and shared within the family. Families have gone down in size, and therefore  families do not have the deep faith and generosity which produces vocations. I  predict that many priests will come from home-schooling families. The answer is  families-to-families apostolates. That is the future of the Church.