Utah's two newest Roman Catholic priests are immigrants -- as are many in the pews of the growing Salt Lake City diocese.

Yet the Revs. Tai Nguyen, 44, and Joseph Frez, 42, have backgrounds quite different from most immigrant Utah Catholics.

Neither hails from a Spanish-speaking country. In fact, both will spend the month of July in Guadalajara, Mexico, learning the first language of many of the Catholics they will serve.

Frez, a native of the Philippines, came to Salt Lake City as a computer programmer. Nguyen is a refugee from Vietnam who spent 17 years in the Philippines before reaching the United States.

The two were ordained priests May 29 by Bishop John C. Wester at Salt Lake City's Cathedral of the Madeleine, the last ordinations in a decade that saw only 13, six fewer than in the 1990s. Meanwhile, during those decades, the number of Utah Catholics swelled from about 200,000 to 300,000.

As the "Year for Priests," declared by Pope Benedict XVI a year ago Saturday, ends, however, there is some indication that the shortage of priests in the United States -- and Utah -- is easing.

The diocese of Salt Lake City now has 13 men in seminaries studying for the priesthood, an unusually high number, said Colleen Gudreau, diocesan communications director.

In the United States, there are more Catholic seminarians (3,483) this year than there were in 1995 (3,172), according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, a nonprofit research center affiliated with Georgetown University.

Nonetheless, the Catholic Church in this country still finds many of its priests among men whose faith first took root in foreign soil.

As Nguyen and Frez look at it, Utah Catholics paid for their seminary studies. Now they are ready to return the favor. Starting in August, Nguyen will be parochial vicar at St. George Parish in St. George, and Frez will have the same position at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Kearns.

Tai Nguyen

Nguyen, 44, was reared in a devout Vietnamese family. His grandparents were killed by the Viet Cong because they were Catholic and his own parents fled North Vietnam in 1964 for South Vietnam, where persecution continued after the Communists took over.

Churches and seminaries were confiscated. "We had no freedom to practice our faith," Nguyen recalls.

Nguyen knew as a teenager that he wanted to be a priest, but he was refused advanced education. "Even though I had a dream, it could not happen," he says. "It was impossible."

He failed six times to flee Vietnam, although his older brother and his twin brother did succeed on one of those attempts, making it to the United States.

After one escape attempt, Nguyen was jailed for five months and tortured, he says. "It was scary."

On his seventh attempt, Nguyen succeeded, although he and dozens of other refugees went eight days without food or water after their boat's motor failed. They were rescued by a fishing boat.

He spent seven years in a refugee camp in the Philippines and then more than nine years under the protection of the Catholic bishops of that country, even though his citizenship status was not settled.

At last able to pursue his studies, Nguyen was two years away from finishing his seminary education when the U.S. government reopened his case along with other refugees stranded in the Philippines.

He finally came to the United States, where he rejoined his twin brother in Atlanta in December 2005.

A few months later, Nguyen got a letter from a Vietnamese priest in the Salt Lake Valley who had heard of Nguyen's seminary training. That priest sent him a plane ticket, and soon Utah, which he never had heard of, was his new home.

He entered Mount Angel Seminary in Oregon, where many Utah seminarians study, in 2006. He spent the first year focusing on English before moving on to advanced philosophical and theological studies.

Ordained a transitional deacon a year ago, he had friends from the Philippines and his two brothers at his ordination to the priesthood last month in Salt Lake City.

His mother died 11 years ago in Vietnam, and his father and other siblings were not allowed to travel to the United States for his ordination.

Through it all, especially the many years of limbo in the Philippines, Nguyen says, he kept assuring himself that God had a plan for him.

Now, he is watching it unfold.

"You have to do the will of God first," Nguyen says, "and everything else he provides."

He wept for joy during the ordination. "I overcame all these trials and difficulties because God is calling me. The most important thing for me is the people. I can bring the word of God to them."

Joseph Frez

Frez ended up in Utah by accident, though he says it might have been God's design.

A computer programmer, he was hired along with dozens of others for a contract that was supposed to be in San Francisco about 15 years ago. Due to a government snarl having to do with visas and budgets, the programmers wound up in Salt Lake City, working in a downtown high-rise.

Any thoughts of the priesthood Frez had entertained as a boy in the Philippines, where two aunts were nuns, came up against the fact his parents couldn't afford his seminary education.

In Salt Lake City, such a notion began taking shape as Frez, lonely so far from friends and family, started attending Mass each afternoon at the Cathedral of the Madeleine.

He began exchanging ideas about religion and the ministry with his Mormon boss and eventually ended up as a seminarian for the diocese at Mount Angel Seminary in Oregon.

Even then, Frez wasn't sure God was calling him to the priesthood. "I didn't want to [later] be asking myself, 'What if, what if.' "

Though the six years he spent in seminary were difficult -- he completed a master's in divinity and is finishing up a second master's degree -- Frez graduated with a certainty about his vocation.

Family members who have immigrated to Sydney, Australia, and friends in Canada attended his ordination.

An increasing number of men, both young and middle-aged, are being drawn to the priesthood despite the clerical abuse scandal, Frez says. They sense a return to orthodoxy under Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.

"They want to take part in the renewal," Frez says.

For his part, Frez is happy he will be a priest in Utah for two key reasons: First of all, priests are not put on pedestals. Second, it's a growing church with room for new ministries, new ways of serving.

"I can be one of the people who can shape the future of the church in Utah."