Father Deacon Kevin Bezner was raised Catholic and attended Catholic schools through high school. Secularism lured him into leaving the Church into agnosticism and then atheism, for several decades, until his study of writing and poetry led him to Zen Buddhism in the 1990s. However, in March 1998, he had a profound conversion experience while driving through the mountains of North Carolina that called him back to the Catholic Faith. Four years later, after thirty years of living outside the Catholic Church, he attended Mass for the first time at St. Peter’s in Charlotte for the Easter Liturgy.

This conversion story he expressed in poetry, and those poems are collected in his recently published book Following the Light.

After a period of discernment, during which he was attending Divine Liturgy at St. Basil the Great Ukrainian Catholic Mission in Charlotte, following the suggestion of several priests and deacons, and with the blessing of his wife Ann, Bezner pursued the diaconate within the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy and was ordained Fr. Deacon Kevin, on August 2nd, 2014

Rev Deacon Kevin Bezner has published seven collections of poetry, edited two books on American poets, and published numerous interviews with American poets and fiction writers. He holds a doctorate in English from Ohio University, a master’s degree in theology from Holy Apostles College and Seminary, master’s degrees in English and American Studies from the University of Maryland, and a bachelor’s in American Studies from Roger Williams.

Rev. Kevin Bezner is a deacon of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of St. Josaphat in Parma, Ohio, and serves at St. Basil the Great Ukrainian Catholic Mission in Charlotte. His articles have appeared in The Catholic Thing, The Christian Review, Lay Witness, and the Catholic News Herald, among others.