A World War II Army veteran, Raymond “Ray” Martin Sr., has joined the Catholic Church at 98 years old.
Before finding his way to the Church in Tuscon, Arizona, Martin served in Okinawa, Japan, and in the Philippines; he then spent 27 years as a police officer in Illinois.
Martin’s connection to Catholicism began with his late wife, Ann Marie.
When Deacon Jacinto “Jack” Trevino, a hospice chaplain and parochial associate at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in the Diocese of Tuscan, met with Martin in December 2025, the two bonded over a shared background in law enforcement and spoke about his wife and her faith.
“Ray is an amazing person,” Deacon Trevino told EWTN News. “We hit it off from the beginning. We talked about the job a lot — and shared some laughs.”
It wasn’t all laughs, though. As they got to know each other, their conversations grew serious.
“Ray talked about his wife, who passed,” Deacon Trevino recalled. “He said she was Catholic and he would attend Mass with her and pray the Rosary.”
“One day he mentioned that he was never baptized or had any of the sacraments and he wanted to be Catholic,” Deacon Trevino continued.
