Fate has taken a unique turn for Anthony Federico.
He’s the former ESPN producer fired for writing the infamous “chink in the armor” headline about Jeremy Lin in 2012.
The Sports Business Journal reports the Catholic church ordained him a priest in June.
“I feel great healing and closure. I don’t have any ill will toward anyone in that time of my life,” he said.
Lin’s strong Christian faith is well known. The basketball player accepted Federico’s apology after sitting down for lunch with him, but even Lin could not have predicted what would come next for the embattled journalist.
The Connecticut Post reports that Federico attended St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, MA, and later at Theological College in Washington, DC. He received his training at several churches throughout the state including a stint at the Office of Radio and Television in Prospect.
How did all this come about? Federico actually landed a second chance at journalism a month after his firing at a sports media company called Live Clips. His regular lunch time stroll took him past St. John the Evangelist Basilica. Something drew him inside the Catholic church and eventually he would make the church’s noon time mass part of his regular routine. That lead him to take night time classes at the church to learn more about the faith.
18 months later, he entered the seminary.
“Looking back, I think God allowed this to happen to me to put me on a path to being a priest, a path that I was avoiding,” He said. “I’ve never been happier,” he said to the Washington Post back in 2017.
Today, he thinks it was the Jeremy Lin incident that lead him to the priesthood.
“Something tells me that this was always the path that I’d been called to,” he said to the Sports Business Journal. “This was the way God used to get my attention — his plan for my life.”
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