Often, when we think about priests, we focus on their role  in the Church, their service to God and to others. We forget sometimes that our priests have lives as human beings, too.

That is the case with Father Carlos Monsalve, parochial vicar of St. Monica Parish in Carpentersville.

He enjoys his time off cooking, a pleasure which his mother, María Restrepo, introduced into his life.

But he didn’t simply learn a passion for cooking from her. She also helped lead him to the road toward priesthood.

Father Monsalve recalls how since he was a kid, he could tell his Mom enjoyed cooking. But it played a bigger role in her life, too.

“My dad died three months before I was born,” Father Monsalve says. “And since his death, my Mom had to get to work. She knew how to cook, so she started a restaurant and when I was born, I was born in a kitchen of a restaurant.”

Watching her at work and at home, he says, “I also learned from her how to recycle (food).”

He watched his mother stretch food. “If there is two-days of rice, (she would) just add soy sauce and more ingredients and the result is a very good rice, like fried rice. So I learned from her how to cook.”

In Medellín, Colombia, where he was born, he says “people feel very happy cooking their best recipes at home for their guests.”

Father Monsalve says he enjoys cooking so much that he considers it almost therapy.

“I am not too rigid with my recipes,” he says. “If there is not one thing, let’s put another one. I invent something and it tastes good. I make use of what I have in the moment and it tastes good.”

Baking cakes was the first thing he learned. He used to bake one each week, “but I ate them all in the same day, because I just loved them.”

Step by step he went on learning from his mother and eventually creating more dishes of his own.
His mother was also an inspiration for his vocation.

“I have enjoyed serving others since I was little,” he says.   “My mother was always ready to help the sick. She belonged to a prayer group called Legion of Mary and they met each week and asked, ‘What act of mercy have you done?’ And each one has to make a list of the good acts they did.”

When it was his mother’s turn, he says, her remarks sparked his own imagination.

“She always talked about the sick people she visited or the incarcerated she visited, and I loved to go to visit those who were sick. Therefore, that dimension of service, of being with those in need, was little by little giving its fruits,” he says.

One day, when he was 18 years old, he went to a youth retreat.

“I liked it, even though I wasn’t sure it was for me.”

That young man — passionate about dancing and planning to be a teacher — had never considered being a priest because “I couldn’t dance during the weekends.”

But his experiences were transforming his ideals.

Later, he says, “When we started philosophy (at the seminary) I enjoyed it, and the ambience, and the missions, and the parish, and I felt really great. And I said this is for me and I stayed.”