Deacon Larry Oney – Former Black Southern Baptist

Deacon Larry Oney grew up in a sharecropping family in Louisiana, experiencing the full range of poverty and racism that came with that life. In college, he met his future wife, a Catholic, who connected him with a deacon who began to speak to the spiritual hunger in his heart. While on a Catholic retreat, he experienced a powerful desire for the Eucharist that would lead him first to full communion with Christ in the Church, and later, a vocation to the diaconate.

Deacon Larry is the founder of Hope and Purpose Ministries.