When the Dominican Apostolate House of Study in San Antonio, Texas reached the maximum number of residents it could accommodate, the Dominicans looked for a place to establish a new House of Study, and chose the Madison County site.

Brother Joseph Thermadom and Brother Adam Zawadzki (both Dominican Missionaries) moved here from Texas in early August, and enrolled in theology classes at the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis.

“Right now there are only the two of us living here, but we are expecting another person to join us in October,” said Brother Adam. “The purpose of our mission is, number one, allowing deaf men to become priests, which is something still relatively rare. Secondly, our goal is to learn to minister specifically to deaf people.”

The order is about 5 years old, said Brother Adam. It was founded back East, moved to the San Francisco area, and then to Texas.

“Basically we were looking around at what nearby schools there were where we could send our seminarians. The fact that there is a large community of Dominicans at Aquinas helped influence our decision to move within commuting distance of there.”

Brother Adam has an associate degree in American sign language from a deaf school in Indianapolis that has a satellite campus in Vincennes. “There were 130 of us in the program,” he said.

Brother Joseph is deaf and already knew how to sign when he came here.

Brother Adam took his final vows on Aug. 29 but Brother Joseph has yet to take his. Both men await their formal names to be granted by their order.

“Our home house is still in San Antonio; it is the main community,” said Brother Adam.

Their Dominican habit includes a white tunic and dark blue chasuble that has a white hood and collar. They plan to participate in parish activities in Madison while they are here. “But our goal is to do deaf ministry, not only within the Diocese of Springfield, but we want to expand into the Archdiocese of St. Louis,” he said.