What Shia LaBeouf’s Life Would Be Like if He Actually Tried to Become a Catholic Deacon

While the rest of us were indulging in the excesses of the last bit of the holiday season, Shia LaBeouf celebrated the end of 2023 by officially declaring his spiritual commitment to the Roman Catholic Church.

Last Thursday, a Facebook post from the celebrity bishop Robert Barron celebrated LaBeouf’s confirmation in a New Year’s Eve Mass at a friary in Solvang, California, officially marking his conversion to the faith. The actor has considered himself agnostic for most of his life, but for his followers out there, this wasn’t particularly surprising: The publicly troubled LaBeouf—who has twice been arrested for disorderly conduct and accused of abusing his ex-girlfriend FKA Twigs—said in 2022 that he found comfort in Catholicism when he felt his “life was on fire.” In that same interview, he explained that he came to this discovery while living with Franciscan friars in preparation for the role of Padre Pio, a well-known Italian mystic priest. (During this interview, he also expressed a love of the Latin Mass—a comment that, knowingly or not, touched on a major controversy in the church—and said he’d sought guidance from Mel Gibson, an ultratraditionalist Catholic.) LaBeouf made it clear he was on the path to confirmation.

But (Shia surprise!) there was something much more unexpected to come from the news: The friar who sponsored his confirmation told the Catholic News Agency that LaBeouf said he wanted to become a deacon “sometime in the future.”

That would be a significant commitment from LaBeouf. A deacon isn’t just a casual church helper. In the Catholic church, a deacon is an ordained clergyman, lesser than a priest but still held to certain obligations—including significant lifestyle ones.

So what would it mean for LaBeouf, exactly?

Well, Deacon Shia LaBeouf would not have to quit his job. Deacons are something of a bridge between the clergy and the laity, a service-oriented position within the church, meant to be both part of the church hierarchy and a regular part of the population. (Most deacons have historically been priests-in-training, using the role as a transition step; the “permanent diaconate,” which LaBeouf would presumably be joining, is an ancient position in the church that was reinstated only in the 1960s.) And he would not have to commit to celibacy—that is, as long as he remains married. (He has been married to the actress Mia Goth since 2016. They separated in 2018 but reconciled in 2022.)

However, this is still a step up from regular Catholicism, so the church is expected to come first. A job can’t take precedence over a deacon’s duties. And should he and Goth legally separate, LaBeouf would be expected to remain celibate. (On a darker note, should something happen to Goth and LaBeouf were left a widower, he would be expected to remain celibate for the rest of his life.)

More immediately, the role would upend LaBeouf’s extracurriculars. There are regional variations to the obligations, but he would be expected to serve some minimum hours a month, both serving his community and, in all likelihood, assisting his parish priest with the Mass. He would have the authority to perform certain ceremonies outside the context of the Mass itself, including baptisms, marriages, and funerals. He could lead prayer services and Bible studies. And he could bring Communion to the dying. These are big responsibilities for the Transformers star.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. To even get there, LaBeouf would have to go through a rigorous, yearslong process. First, there’s a roughly one-year process of meetings and sessions to learn about the commitments. That’s followed by a period, up to two years in length, of more meetings and classes during which he would decide whether to go forward; the church would also weigh whether he was a good fit. And that period would be followed by another three or four years of candidacy, in which he would attend intensive courses and training to prepare him for the position. The program at Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology at Seton Hall University, for example, requires that candidates take graduate-level courses from 7 to 9:30 p.m. on weekdays over eight semesters, plus spend one Saturday a month in practical training.

In total, it would all take five or six years. If LaBeouf were to make it through the whole training, he would only then be ordained and take a vow of obedience to his bishop. But there’s still one step left: He would then sign a ministry agreement, committing himself to a certain number of hours a month, and his bishop would then have power to assign him to a particular church or send him off to help with a community center that a church is involved with, such as a retirement home, a prison, or a hospital.

Also signing his ministry agreement would be Goth. Only men are allowed to be deacons, and if a deacon is married, the church expects his wife to know just what kind of life they’re getting into. So she too would probably need to sit in on preparatory meetings, and her permission will ultimately be needed for LaBeouf to be ordained.

LaBeouf would take no other vows. But the church expects that the process of becoming a deacon would inspire the applicant to take on a more Christlike mindset and compel them to have a simpler, humbler way of life. A deacon is, per Catholic theology, acting on Christ’s behalf, so he should try to take things pretty seriously. And it’s a more binding role than, say, a job: Once a Catholic deacon, always a Catholic deacon. Presumably, this would mean no more NC-17 roles for LaBeouf, unless he finds himself under the leadership of a particularly chill bishop.

As for whether all this would be able to fit into the career of an A-list actor, that’s a bit of an unknown. LaBeouf’s celebrity does give him a certain amount of power, but film shoots aren’t always known for their work-life balance. Often, employers have to be on board in order for someone to be able to become a deacon, given the commitments. But LaBeouf, who once cried for six days in a gallery as part of a performance art piece, seems to know how to stick to his commitments. Perhaps for this particular envelope-pushing actor, artist, and filmmaker, clergyman is a reasonable-enough next career step.

The explainer thanks Deacon Andrew Saunders, director of the center for diaconal formation at Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology, Seton Hall University.