Seventeen-year-old Ashley Billado has an eye for details and a heart for helping.

That’s why when her pastor at St. Luke Church in Fairfax, Father Henry Furman, asked her to create a display in the church to encourage awareness of and prayer for seminarians of the Diocese of Burlington, she readily agreed.

Using a poster with photos of seminarians, Ashley cut out the photos with exacting precision and placed them in silver-colored frames that were hung on a back wall of the church interior. They surround a small statue of St. John Vianney mounted to the wall. (He was a French parish priest who is the patron saint of parish priests.)

“She likes to do little projects like this,” Sally Billado said of the youngest of her two children. “She loves doing projects, especially for other people and uses her creative ideas in making them look good.”

Ashley, a soft-spoken junior at Bellows Free Academy Fairfax, enjoys painting with acrylics and photography. She took the photographs for a parish directory that is due out in early 2020.

She studies early childhood education at Essex Center of Technology and hopes to have a career in child care. “I like to see (children) learn and grow, and they are just adorable,” she said with a smile.

An honor roll student who was confirmed two years ago, Ashley said the seminarian project was “fun” and she focused on “making sure it looks very nice.”

She has met some of the seminarians in the parish and at different events, but now she is more aware of them and their importance to the Diocese. She prays that they “will do well and everything will go good” and that they will become priests who are engaging and connected to their parishioners.

“They’ll be helpful in our (diocesan) life,” she added.

Mrs. Billado, the parish director of religious education, said she has noticed people looking at the seminarian display and that they remark how much they like it.