Personal Profile
Finding yourself working on the cutting edge, in an industry that has existed for the blink of an eye, Tom Rochfort acknowledges the role both God and community play in keeping you grounded. In his life, he manages to hold working in IT and faith in God balanced. He told The Irish Catholic where this came from:
Gradual process
“So, it was more of a gradual process than I think it can sometimes be for people who would convert. I was catechised well enough by my parents and then, later on, by the Legionaries and overall, I got a pretty good catechism growing up. Then, during my teenage years, I’d kind of be more introduced to things that would’ve been contrary to what I believed, and it would’ve required me to think about, ‘Well, why do I believe this? Does it make sense?’
There would have been Mass every day and it was just a great time to build a community feel”
“And so, I always found that I always had people and resources that I could go to find out why we would believe this or such things. It wasn’t always super easy. There would have been times where I would’ve doubted or times when I just maybe didn’t even want to believe because it wasn’t convenient for me at the time. But through all that, I always had good people to turn to that I could and I had a good relationship with God growing up so he was always there and I don’t think he was really letting me get too far away from him at any point,” he laughs.
Community
Tom gives a lot of credit to the community of young men he was privy to from a young age and emphasises the importance of having good examples around you to aspire to.
“I grew up with my parents joining the lay movement in the Legionaries of Christ, which was called Regnum Christi, and so when I turned 11 and 12, I started going on these camps where you’d go away for, usually a week in the summer or around Halloween during the mid-term, there was usually maybe three in the year that we’d go to and a bunch of guys would go away, between 12 and 18. It was run by the Legionaries so there were priests called Fr Darren and Fr Fergal both, kind of, running it and there would have been other, maybe some of the kids’ dads or other people, helping out so a great group of solid Catholics and just guys hanging out, and it all being done in the spirit of the Faith. There would have been Mass every day and it was just a great time to build a community feel.
“I think, well, young boys definitely want to see something that they want to aspire to be, and these men who would’ve been running it, while not perfect, would’ve definitely been something that you would want to emulate. There was just something desirable about it and you kind of had a real sense of, ‘Oh, this is how a man should act,’ I suppose. And that, I think as teenagers and young boys, you kind of crave that.”
Having a grounding in both God and community is essential, as Tom works in the fluid and ever-mobile field of Information Technology”
The importance of community amongst young Catholics is something that rears its head time and again, with many confessing it to be difficult to stay strong in a world packed to the brim with distractions. Tom is foremost among those advocating for a sense of “brotherhood”.
Brotherhood
“I think there’s really a brotherhood that we all need and know it’s backed up in scripture about how you need to have a community. It’s part of our Faith. Having a community is so important, and with it being just guys, yeah, there’s a lot you share in common and you can talk about your struggles more openly and encourage each other.”
Having a grounding in both God and community is essential, as Tom works in the fluid and ever-mobile field of Information Technology.
“So what we do is we provide IT solutions for different companies, so we have a couple of groups of solicitors or we do some work for schools as well, and we manage their IT side of things and we provide solutions for them to get, so they can be the most productive they can be, so sometimes that would involve fixing broken computers but that’s not really the main thing. We’ll supply them with what they need and a lot of, kind of, cloud solutions and sorting out their office licenses so they can all have office and all save on one drive or whatever way they’ve decided to set it up. And then we provide the support for them, so if they’re ever having IT issues they can give us a call.”
God didn’t just intend the nations to be evangelised; he intended everything to be referred back to him, including the IT industry along with all other forms of work – a fact Tom is keenly aware of. Asked where he finds God in what he does, he says:
“It’s through the small things. There’s not much evangelisation I can do in this job – it’s a family business and we’re all good Catholics. Well, we’re all as good as we can be,” he laughs.
So it can be, and you just give it all to God anytime there’s anything that’s not going your way, or you try to”
“Yeah, it’s just through the small things, like St Therese saying it’s just doing the small acts with great love. That’s basically it. It can be stressful sometimes; like as you know when your computer’s not working, it’s stressful for you, and that’s kind of what we do all the time, you know? So it can be, and you just give it all to God anytime there’s anything that’s not going your way, or you try to.”