After traveling the world, Deacon Cloutier finds diaconate his biggest adventure

Deacon Mark Cloutier has experienced the adventures of traveling the world. He has seen notable sites of the Middle East and Europe, climbed the pyramids of Egypt, and looked upon the Nile River. Now he finds his biggest adventure in serving people as a deacon for the Diocese of Baton Rouge.   

Bishop Michael G. Duca ordained Deacon Cloutier to the permanent diaconate on May 25 at St. Joseph Cathedral in Baton Rouge.  

Deacon Cloutier’s parents, Joseph Raymond Phillip and Beverly Alma Cloutier, are natives of Maine. Deacon Cloutier’s father had a career as a mechanical engineer, which caused the family to travel extensively.  

Deacon Cloutier was born in Illinois, but lived in many places growing up, including Nebraska, St. Louis, Houston, the state of Deleware, and Baton Rouge (three times) and Iran, where he received his first Communion from an Irish priest.

“That was a challenge in my life,” said Deacon Cloutier. “When I was young, I was kind of introverted with that many moves and having that many friendships that have been started and then you move away.”  

The upside of moving often is that it strengthened Deacon Cloutier’s relationship with his siblings: Michael, David, and Stephanie.

“Every time we moved, I still had my siblings,” said Deacon Cloutier.  

Another anchor and “eternal light” of Deacon Cloutier’s faith was his French Canadian grandmother, whom he knew as Grandmama, who lived in Lewiston, Maine.   

“She was a very simple grandmother,” said Deacon Cloutier. “She loved her children, she really loved her grandchildren, and the number one love of her life was the Lord.”  

Deacon Cloutier’s father built a camp in Maine where his wife and children stayed during the summers while he worked away. Deacon Cloutier spent time there with his extended family, especially his grandmother.  

“My grandfather had passed. I would go and do whatever she wanted done. I was the little handyman; I would fix her steps, I would paint the steps, I would organize things. She was so faithful that we’d stop what we were doing and go to Mass. That’s how she centered her life. Every day was about going to Mass and loving the Lord.”  

When Deacon Cloutier was 16, his grandmother asked him, “Mark, have you ever considered a vocation to the priesthood?”    

He credited his grandmother with being “the evangelist that called me and guided me to the diaconate program.”  

Deacon Cloutier received a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Kansas State University in 1986. His career has taken him to four states and seven companies, with Baton Rouge being his home city with three of the seven companies.  
 
When he served on the board of the Baton Rouge Junior Chamber of Commerce, Deacon Cloutier met his wife, Lisa. They married in 1997. They adopted two daughters who were born from the same mother: Mary, 23, a graduate of St. Joseph's Academy in Baton Rouge, who finished her second year of veterinary school at LSU, and Megan, 20, a graduate of OLOM School and SJA, who finished her second year at the University of Mississippi, where she is studying international marketing.  

Our Lady of Mercy Church is the Cloutiers’ home parish because “they fell in love with the very vibrant parish,” according to Deacon Cloutier.  

And that’s where more seeds were planted for Deacon’s Cloutier discernment to enter the diaconate.  

He attended OLOM’s second men’s ACTS retreat in 2018, which stirred his spirit to do more for the parish.  

One Sunday, before the 10:30 a.m. Mass, during which Deacon Cloutier was serving as lector, Father Cleo Milano, OLOM pastor, stopped him and said, “Mark, I want to pray with you.”  

“He prayed that I would discern becoming a deacon,” said Deacon Cloutier. “Moved by the ACTS retreat and moved by Father Cleo personally praying with me and asking the Holy Spirit to help me discern about becoming a deacon, I went to the discernment meetings.”  

He also remembered his grandmother always talking to him about discerning a vocation in the church, and that three family friends from Georgia were deacons, which further motivated him to enter the diaconate program in the fall of 2018.  

As a cradle Catholic, Deacon Cloutier found the most difficult part of formation was the understanding of the deep theology of the words.  

“Some of the words I had not ever read before or had not been in my vocabulary,” Deacon Cloutier said. “My challenge in most of my academic courses was the words that require new understanding of the definition to understand the syntax and context relative to using them.”  

The deacon, however, benefitted from learning about from the solid foundation and mission upon which the church is built.  

“We are pursuing it in various ways in our ministries in our diocese, in ways that I had been unaware even existed. They answer all the callings of the beatitudes and for Christ’s mission for all of us to be good neighbors.”   

Deacon Cloutier was excited to begin his assignment as deacon assistant at OLOM on June 1.  His assigned Ministry of Charity is to serve the needs of Prisoners in the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison.  

“There’s always been a thread in my thoughts that I have been called to the diaconate and to evangelize for the church,” said Deacon Cloutier. “And there’s no greater place (than within the Diocese of Baton Rouge) to find somebody that's lost. They call themselves a ‘none’ or they’re ex-Catholic.  

“It’s important to reinvite them to come back and see the vibrancy, the true word of God, to encourage everybody to come enter the doors of mercy. I think if we can encourage them and get them into the church in this day and age, they'll see the truth and they'll be excited to know that there's a community; that the doors have always been open to join us,” said Deacon Cloutier.