Deacon Joseph was baptized Catholic, at the insistence of his father, when he little. When he was four, his father died and his mother then brought him up in a Pentecostal Church. Later in life, he was received into the Eastern Orthodox Church. His realization of the need of the authority of St. Peter as it is exercised through his successor the Bishop of Rome brought his to full-communion with the Catholic Church where he was ordained a deacon.