Cato was ordained by the Anglican church in June 2016, almost 50 years to the day after he graduated from the Army’s language program to become a translator and prisoner interrogator — proof, he said, that life unfolds not only according to God’s plan, but according to His timetable, as well.

In fact, retrospect helps Cato make sense of many things he once could not understand. When he entered the Army, for instance, he was engaged. However, the relationship could not withstand the couple’s separation. So he gave the engagement ring to an Army buddy in return for a camera. He intended to hone his skills in Vietnam and become a photojournalist when he returned to civilian life. For the most part, that turned out as Cato planned.

After his discharge, he worked for a newspaper in his hometown of Chester, then transferred from the University of South Carolina at Lancaster to the main campus in Columbia to finish his journalism degree. After stops at newspapers in Conway, Greenwood and Myrtle Beach, Cato was named editor of The Beaufort Gazette in 1980, a title he held until his retirement in 2008. Cato wrote thousands of editorials and columns and edited tens of thousands of news articles. He says he enjoyed his work at institutions that strive to be the eyes, ears and conscience of a community.

Nonetheless, as his career drew to a close, he began to feel as though he had written every editorial at least once before. What was worse: “I was always sitting in judgment of somebody.” In 2004, as unease began to envelop Cato’s professional life, his wife, Susan, noticed an item in their church bulletin seeking mission workers for a project in the Dominican Republic. She encouraged her husband to go, and he did. Cato returned again and again, eventually logging nine trips to the Dominican, and another to Uganda. Susan was also responsible for Cato’s first trip to China. For Christmas 2006, she bought him a plane ticket to visit their son Justin, who would be there the next year, participating in a college project. Cato began making regular trips there, making friends within China’s small but devout Christian community.

Cato’s travel and mission work continued into retirement, and he felt God calling him to the ministry. He was ordained at age 71. He notes many similarities between his work for the newspaper and for the church. Both aim to strengthen communities and use stories to impart truth, for example. But if journalism compelled Cato to expose misery, the ministry compels him to ease it. As an editorial writer, Cato wrote “the equivalent of a novel” on the need to intervene in people’s lives before they wind up in prison. “Not much success or significance,” he says, summing up the impact. But as a deacon, he goes into prisons to work directly with inmates, as part of the Kairos ministry. In this work, you can see “an eternal significance in people’s lives — the difference between hell and heaven.”