Seoul Archdiocese: Cardinal Andrea Soo-jung Ordains 20 Men to the Priesthood

Cardinal Andrea Yeom Soo-jung ordained 20 men to the priesthood for Seoul archdiocese on February 5, 2021. The ordination ceremony was held at Myeongdong Cathedral. The Catholic Church in South Korea has been growing steadily and currently 11% of the population are Catholics. Image Credits: Seoul archdiocese #Catholic #ShalomWorld #Seoul #Faith #Hope #SouthKorea #Priesthood (Source: Shalom TV)

Benin City Priestly Ordination

2019 Priestly Ordination:

''Work in harmony and lay down your lives for the flocks of Christ''---- President CBCN tasks Priests as he invests three deacons into the order of the catholic priesthood in Benin city

Kaibahan ng Tinawag na Lingkod at ng mga Bayarang Ministro

GANITO ANG TUNAY NA TINAWAG NA PARI TUNAY NA IGLESIA NI CRISTO

Iba ang mga bayarang manggagawa sa tunay na lingkod ng Diyos. Ang pagpapari ay isang TAWAG o BOKASYON. Hindi ito nararamdaman ng tinawag sa paglilingkod. At kapag siya ay tinawag at tumugon, siya ay nangangakong magiging pari ni Cristo at lingkod ng Iglesia nang walang kapalit.

Photo Source: African Catholics

No matter the weather elements: A Nigerian Catholic Priest on his way to celebrate the Holy Mass.
In whatever conditions or situation, they are always ready to do their Master's work. Remember to pray for your Priests always.

Ang Pagiging Ministro sa Iglesia ni Cristo ay Hindi Lamang Dahil sa May Tinatamasang Kasaganaan sa Sanlibutan

Nakatutuwang basahin ang artikulong ito tungkol sa isang alagad ng Santa Iglesia na naging PARI sa kabila ng kanyang kaalaman sa siyensa. (Mula sa Washington Post).

Why a Yale neuroscientist decided to change careers — and is now becoming a priest

Jaime Maldonado-Aviles, a former neuroscientist at Yale, decided to become a priest at Catholic University’s Theological College in Washington. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

Even as he sought the truth day in and day out, peering into mice brains in the lab to figure out the mysteries of addiction and depression, Jaime Maldonado-Aviles was filled with uncertainty.

Was this what he should be doing with his life? As he excelled in school, earned a post-doctoral position at Yale, and won prestigious fellowships, Maldonado-Aviles wondered: Is this what God wants from me?

Eventually, the calling he felt from God became too powerful to ignore. The promising neuroscientist left the Ivy League research laboratory — and entered seminary at Catholic University of America in Northeast D.C. to become a priest.

“This constant intuition — I almost want to say nagging — that maybe I was called to serve in a different way… it was always frequent,” he said. “At different times the question would come back: If I see myself 90 years old, close to death, would I say to myself, ‘I should have entered seminary’?”

He entered. And now, within the church, he hopes to help Catholics understand scientists, and scientists understand Catholics.

[A scientist’s new theory: Religion was key to humans’ social evolution]

Scientists are a secular lot, on the whole. While 95 percent of Americans say they believe in God or some other higher power, just 51 percent of scientists do, according to a 2009 Pew study. But many of them quietly believe. And a small but significant number are turning from research to the priesthood, bringing a science-based perspective to the Catholic church that many church leaders say is greatly needed.

When Maldonado-Aviles arrived at Theological College, the Catholic University seminary, many of his classmates were young men just out of college. But he also found among his peers a seminarian with a PhD in chemistry, another who studied nanoscience, another who first went to medical school.

The number of seminarians in Washington who studied the sciences, at least as undergraduates, is high enough that Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the head of the archdiocese, has noticed it. “Here they are, saying, ‘There’s more,'” he said about those seminarians who seek God after finding science first.

[Cardinal Wuerl voices Catholic support for immigrants, but urges caution about sanctuary churches]

Ken Watts works as a recruiter for Pope St. John XXIII Seminary, a unique school in Massachusetts open specifically to men over 30 — sometimes many decades over 30 — who decide they want to become priests. By far the most common first career for these men is education, he said, followed by healthcare, military service, social work and other religious work — all fields that logically might lead to the priesthood. But he’s guided scientists to seminary quite a few times.

“They seem to fit in pretty well, is all I can say. There doesn’t seem to be a terrible struggle for them to bring their scientific backgrounds through the front door here. Nobody asks them to abandon it,” Watts said. “When the moral issues are those that revolve around medical, scientific areas, it’s certainly helpful to have people who really understand that world to help refine and clarify the church’s thinking on this.”

Suzanne Tanzi, a spokeswoman for Theological College who noted the several scientists who have enrolled there, said scientist-priests are particularly helpful given one of the primary focuses of the current pope, who in fact was once a chemist himself: the environment. Francis’s first major writing as pope was a highly technical treatise on the environment, and the church has been an increasingly vocal advocate worldwide for policies to reduce climate change.

[10 key excerpts from Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment]

As Watts put it: “They’re very, very valuable.”

Maldonado-Aviles’s thoughts about the priesthood started early, as a youth growing up in Puerto Rico. He participated in mission trips as a high schooler, and started wondering what it would be like to grow up to be a missionary.

Instead, he studied biology at the University of Puerto Rico, where he earned a fellowship for honors students through the National Institutes of Health. After he earned his doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh, he went into a post-graduate program at Yale, where he spent six years. He became particularly interested in researching the molecular basis of eating disorders.

Almost three years ago, he got a job offer that seemed perfect: a tenure-track position doing research at the pharmacy school at the University of Puerto Rico. The job would bring him home to be closer to his family, which he had been wanting. It would mean longterm stability, a good salary and the chance to do interesting, meaningful research.

And after much debate, Maldonado-Aviles turned down the offer.

“I have to seriously explore these questions,” he decided. And his process of priestly formation began.

That requires two years of philosophy, which some candidates complete while they are undergraduates, followed by four years of theology. For Maldonado-Aviles, who never studied either subject, that means six years of schooling. Now, at age 37, he’s in his third year.

[Seriously, I am giving up President Trump for Lent. Here’s how.]

If he continues on pace, he’ll be over 40 when he becomes a priest. That makes him older than more than 80 percent of newly-ordained priests in recent years, according to statistics from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, but far from the oldest. So-called “second vocation” priests have always been a presence in seminaries. American seminaries in 2016 ordained six men in their 50s and three in their 60s.

Moving back into a dorm, Maldonado-Aviles has given up some things: He doesn’t earn a salary, instead living with his fellow seminarians where the church takes care of his needs. He can’t visit his family in Puerto Rico as often.

And he used to date, and assumed he would someday marry. Now, he anticipates a life of celibacy if he becomes a priest.

“I wouldn’t say that I’m making more sacrifices” than someone in a marriage, which requires sacrifices of its own, he said. “If I believe God is calling me to be a priest, I also believe he will give me charisms — gifts — that will help me.”

Maldonado-Aviles is careful to say that he does not know yet that he will certainly become a priest. The time he spends in seminary is all part of his process of discernment: Reading the clues that God has left for him that point to the path he’s meant to take. He saw some of those signs long before he entered seminary — times he heard a particular Biblical passage in Mass and felt it was calling personally to him to radically devote his life to Jesus, for instance.

He seeks these clues with a diligence and precision that hearkens back to his first career.

[On Ash Wednesday, ashes to go — with a little extra sparkle for LGBT Christians]

He said he used to feel like the only one in the lab who believed in God — until he started seeing Yale professors filling the same pews he sat in at Mass. His work studying neurons led him to marvel all the more at God’s handiwork: “The complexity and yet the order in which things work in our body and in our brain, it makes you think there’s more than just randomness.”

But reconciling his faith and his work wasn’t always so easy. He remembers going to a talk about the development of the human neocortex, and realizing that the research being presented had been conducted on aborted human embryos in Europe.

He was shaken to think that his scientific career might bring him in contact with abortion, which the church teaches is a grave sin. “What is it that I’m doing? Would I ever compromise my faith based on the pressure for success?” he wondered.

Now, he says he has a deep interest in bioethics. Inspired by a handful of priest-scientists around him at Catholic University and some of the greats of Catholic history — priest Georges Lemaitre who first came up with the Big Bang theory, monk Gregor Mendel who originated the study of genetics — he envisions a potential future bridging the two realms. He wants to advise scientists on the ethics of their work.

Dating Hindu, Ngayo'y Kaanib na ng Tunay na Iglesia ni Cristo at Naging Pari!

Kauna-Unahang Lokal na Pari ng Iglesia ni Cristo sa Mongolia: Rev. Father Joseph Enkh Baatar

Ni Antonio Anup Gonsalves

Fr. Joseph Enkh Baatar habang nagmi-Misa sa kauna-unahang pagkakataon bilang bagong pari mula sa Mongolia (Agosto. 28, 2016. Larawan mula sa Mbumba Prosper, CICM)

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, Aug 30, 2016 / 04:47 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- On Sunday Mongolia witnessed the ordination of its first indigenous priest, Fr. Joseph Enkh Baatar, a 29-year-old man who represents the first fruits of 24 years of missionary work in the east Asian country.

Bishop Wenceslao Padilla, the prefect of Ulaanbaatar, ordained Joseph Enkh Baatar a priest at an Aug. 28 Mass at St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in the Mongolian capital.

“Fr. Joseph’s ordination is a blessing of God and a moment of immense joy and inspiration for our young Mongolian Church,” Chamingerel Ruffina, a member of the organizing committee for communications at the National Catechetical Center of Mongolia, told CNA Aug. 30.

The first modern mission to Mongolia was established in 1922 and was entrusted to the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But under a communist government influenced by the Soviet Union, religious expression was soon thereafter suppressed.

Bishop Padilla, a member of the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, was one of the first three missionaries allowed into Mongolia in 1992, after the fall of communism. He became superior of the mission in Mongolia, and was instrumental in helping to discern Fr. Baatar's vocation.

The bishop praised God for the historic moment of the apostolic prefecture's first native vocation, and prayed that many more such vocations would arise to help the local Church.

The Mass was concelebrated by Archbishop Osvaldo Padilla, apostolic nuncio to Mongolia and Korea; Bishop Lazarus You Heung-sik of Daejon, in South Korea; and more than 100 priests from South Korea and Hong Kong.

More than 1,500 persons attended the Mass, including dignitaries of foreign embassies, local Orthodox churches, and Buddhist monks. The Mass was followed by joyous festival.

Ruffina commented that “This meaningful liturgical celebration of the sacrament of priestly ordination conducted in their own indigenous language gave an opportunity to the faithful to actually witness in proximity, to celebrate, and to understand the various steps in preparation for the priesthood and the ordination rite.”

The faithful of Mongolia had prepared for the event by reciting a novena to St. Paul to strengthen their missionary spirit during the Year of Mercy.

Fr. Baatar was born June 24, 1987. He lost his father at a young age, and his sister introduced him to the Catholic faith. His dream of joining the priesthood was initially postponed, due to his family's strong desire that he complete his university studies.

After graduating with a degree in biotechnology and with the support of his family, he then applied to become a seminarian for the Prefecture Apostolic of Ulaanbaatar.

Fr. Baatar entered the Daejeon seminary in South Korea, and was ordained a deacon in December 2014.

Concluding the Mass, the newly ordained priest profoundly thanked his family and his mentors at the seminary, especially Bishop You. He also praised the important role played by Bishop Padilla through his support of his vocation.

Fr. Baatar urged the faithful to pray for his priestly ministry so that he could faithfully fulfill his ordination motto, chosen from the gospel of Luke: "Deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow me."

“I thank the Lord who has called me to serve Him through the priesthood. I am also grateful to all the people who have helped me respond to this calling,” Fr. Baatar expressed.

Bishop You reminded the new priest that “the best way of announcing the good news is a life of witnessing.”

Commenting on the vast missionary work that lies ahead in Mongolia, the South Korean bishop said, “Fr. Joseph, being a Mongolian citizen, has to live as a missionary in his own country.”

Ruffina also recounted that the parishioners of Saint Mary’s parish gave Fr. Baatar a Bible which was handwritten by the parishioners themselves.

A young family ministry volunteer, Clara Gantesetseg, told CNA that “the ordination gift of Fr. Joseph Enkh is sign of hope to our people in Mongolia, and a special a gift during this Year of Mercy.”

Clara noted that “Fr. Joseph’s indigenous roots, his cultural and life experiences of his own and the people, will help to transcend the teachings of the Church to the local culture for better understanding, and also will foster interreligious dialogue.”

Among the guests at the Mass was the Abbot Dambajav of Dashi Choi Lin Buddhist Monastery. He praised the efforts of the Catholic Church and encouraged Fr. Baatar to take up the responsibility of helping the Mongolian people. He also gave the new priest a blue khadag, a ceremonial scarf, as a mark of friendship.

Ruffina pointed out that the Buddhist monk's participation and his kind words of encouragement will further forge bonds of friendship and interreligious dialogue between the communities for peaceful co-existence.

A little over half Mongolia's population is Buddhist, and following the decades of communist rule, 39 percent of Mongolia's population is non-religious. Islam, shamanism, and Christianity have mere footholds among the people.

The Prefecture Apostolic of Ulaanbaatar serves all of the estimated 1,200 Catholics in the country, which has a population of 3 million. In 2014, the local Church had three diocesan priests, who were aided by 14 religious.

PARI hinubog ng mahabang panahon! Ministro/Pastor hinubog ng mahigit isang taon!

Mula sa Palakasan sa Olympics, ngayo'y Pari!

From Olympic Athlete to Diocesan Priest
Source: National Catholic Register

New York native Father Joe Fitzgerald now recruits others to serve at the altar.


BY TRENT BEATTIE 08/05/2016

New York native Father Joe Fitzgerald now recruits others to serve at the altar.

It’s not often that someone can say his local priest was also an Olympic athlete. However, this can be done in the case of Father Joe Fitzgerald, who competed in the 1996 games in Atlanta. He was on the U.S. handball team with his brother, Thomas. They had traveled to dozens of countries for competitions and were back home playing on the biggest athletic stage in the world.

Participating in the Olympics was a great thrill for Father Fitzgerald, but it pales in comparison to serving as a minster of God. Now, as vocations director for the Diocese of Rockville Centre, N.Y., he works daily to find other men who will share in the joy of his ministry.

Father Joe Fitzgerald spoke with Register correspondent Trent Beattie leading up to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

What exactly is handball?

Handball — not to be confused with American handball, which is like racquetball — developed into its modern-day form largely through early 20th-century European soccer coaches who wanted their players to learn how to use their hands in recreation. It is now played indoors with teams (of seven competitors each) trying to score goals on each other. Maybe the simplest way to describe it is that it’s like water polo without the water and played in a gym.

How did you get started in handball?

I would tag along with my brother, Thomas, who is five and a half years older than I am, to his sports practices. I loved being around older kids doing things I wanted to do. I looked up to them and couldn’t wait to get out and run around like they were. Little did I know that in 1996 I would be playing on the U.S. Olympic handball team with my brother.

As I grew older and did play on my own teams, a P.E. teacher at North Babylon High School and the school’s principal came up with handball as a way for getting all kinds of different kids to play on the same team. We enjoyed it a lot, and we became quite good at it; and it never seemed to interfere with the schedules of my other sports of football, basketball and baseball.

I got to play football at Ithaca College, a Division III school. I was the backup quarterback on their national championship team in 1991. Curiously, I was one of the team’s leading rushers as the backup QB — that shows how much I liked to run the ball — and the next year, as a senior starter, we went 9-1, but did not make it back to the national championship game.

Like most college players, I didn’t go to the NFL, but I did start playing handball more intensely, traveling to approximately 50 countries for competitions. The biggest highlight was playing on the U.S. Olympic team with my brother in 1996. So much dedication went into making that team, and the overall experience at the games was so amazing that I don’t feel bad about not winning a medal. That would have been nice, but as the Olympic Oath states, it is about the opportunity to compete more than to win.

Did you always know you’d be a priest?

As a kid I was not certain I’d be a priest, but I was open to the possibility. I thought maybe I’d get married or be a priest, so either vocation was in play. My brother, two sisters and I were encouraged by our parents to pursue whatever vocation we might have, and my uncle was a priest, so that made priesthood more visible to me.

I lived in the Atlanta area from 1994 to 2000 and got acquainted with Life Teen. It was at one of their retreats I helped to lead that the Lord really got my attention. It was during a Eucharistic adoration prayer service when it became so clear that it wasn’t enough for me to talk about being a follower of Christ; I had to actually do more following of Christ myself.

I had made some really dumb decisions and was not really living on a level pleasing to God. I understood that being lukewarm was not an option and that I had a choice between heaven and hell. God wanted me to belong entirely to him, but I was just talking the talk and walking the walk only when it was convenient for me.

Lokal na Iglesia ni Cristo sa Mongolia, Magkakaroon na ng Kauna-unahang Pari

Ito ang totoong LOKAL na tinatawag. Sapagkat isang LOKAL na PARI ang mamamahala na sa tunay na Iglesia ni Cristo sa Mongolia. Tunay nga na ang Iglesia ni Cristo ay lumalago at buhay na buhay sa mga lugar na hindi pa nakakarinig ng Mabuting Balita.

For Mongolian Catholics, a first native priest is a source of joy and pride

The country’s Catholic community is the world's youngest. On 28 August, it will celebrate the ordination of Deacon Joseph Enkhee-Baatar. “One of us has it made! And if he did it, others will follow his example. We are sure that there will be many after him." An indigenous Catholic minister will be able to “connect our faith with what our” traditions.

Ulaanbaatar (AsiaNews) – On 28 August of this year, Mongolia’s tiny Catholic community will welcome its first native priest, Joseph Enkhee-Baatar, at a service in Ulaanbaatar’s Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral led by Mgr Wenceslao Padilla, apostolic prefect of Mongolia.

In December 2014, the future priest was ordained deacon by Mgr Lazzaro You Heung-sik, bishop of Daejeon. Fr Giorgio Marengo, a Consolata missionary present in the country since 2003, sent AsiaNews the following piece in which he describes the reaction of his community of faithful to the news.

The small Catholic community in Arvaiheer (21 people) joyfully welcomed the news that on 28 August Enkhee-Joseph will be ordained as the first native priest of ‘Outer’ Mongolia. In Chinese-controlled Inner Mongolia, there have been priests in the past century, but none in independent Mongolia. Enkhee will be the first.

Sitting around the table, sipping some suutei-tsai (a salty tea with milk) after Sunday Mass, parishioners expressed their views about the news. Obviously, they are happy about it.

For some, "Enkhee has shown that he is very patient and disciplined if he has managed to train for so long and in a foreign country." In fact, Enkhee spent many years at seminary in Daejeon, South Korea, the guest of the local diocese.

The faithful know that becoming a priest is a demanding process, especially in terms of self-discipline. Some actually can hardly believe it. Still "One of us has it made! And if he did it, others will follow his example. We are sure that there will be many after him."

In reality, no one knows him personally. When they were baptised, he was already in Korea to study. Of course, they their love and prayer went along with him to the faraway place.

"For us it is very important that the new priest be Mongolian because he will speak our language like one of our children or one of our siblings. More importantly, he will be able to link the faith to our traditions."

Fr. John Bartunek: Dating Ateista (Hindi Naniniwalang may Dios), Naging Pari ng Iglesia

Muslim mother supports her Catholic priest son

From Asia News |
Mathias Hariyadi 10/13/2015

The Muslim family of Robertus B. Asiyanto joyfully participated in his ordination in Maumere. His mother laid her hands on the altar: "I'm really happy with my son’s choice". The island of Flores is one of the few predominantly Catholic areas of Indonesia.

Jakarta (AsiaNews) - A Muslim woman blessed her son, a Catholic deacon, at the altar of the church where shortly after he was ordained priest. The incident happened three days ago in the chapel of the Major Seminary of Maumere on the island of Flores. Eleven deacons, belonging to the Divine Word Missionary order (SVD), were ordained in the presence of Msgr. Vincensius Poto Kota Pr, Archbishop of Ende.

Sites Asiyah, wearing Islamic dress (including the hijab), was accompanied by her son Robertus B. Asiyanto, nicknamed "Yanto", and laid her hands on his head, under the gaze of his adoptive father who was watching from the front with the rest of the family. "I'm really happy to see my son ordained a Catholic priest," said the woman at the end of the celebration.

The island of Flores, Eastern Nusa Taggara province, has the highest concentration of Catholics in the country, who form the majority of the population of the island. This is why it is rare for a Muslim family to willingly accept the conversion of a son to Catholicism, given that it is a rare event. Central Java is Muslim majority, but many men and women religious come from Muslim families, and it is not seen as exceptional.

In southern Sumatra the different paths of twin sisters has become famous: one is a devout Muslim, and has participated in the last pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca; the other became Catholic and entered the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart (Pbhk) of Merauke, on the island of Papua. Both are happy and have good family relationships.

Kwento ng Dalawang Kambal na Muntikan nang i-abort, naging pari!

(CNA/EWTN News).- Two twin brothers in Chile say that their mother’s determination in protecting them from abortion despite the advice of doctors helped to foster their vocations to the priesthood.

“How can I not defend the God of life?” said Fr. Paulo Lizama. “This event strengthened my vocation and gave it a specific vitality, and therefore, I was able to give myself existentially to what I believe.”

“I am convinced of what I believe, of what I am and of what I speak, clearly by the grace of God,” he told CNA.

Fr. Paulo and his identical twin brother, Fr. Felipe, were born in 1984 in the Chilean town of Lagunillas de Casablanca.

Before discovering her pregnancy, their mother, Rosa Silva, had exposed herself to x-rays while performing her duties as a paramedic. Consequently, after confirming the pregnancy, her doctor conducted ultrasounds and informed her that he had seen “something strange” in the image.

Mga Komento ni Fr. Barron tungkol sa mga Kaanib na Lumilisan

Dating adik ngayo'y isang pari na!

Padre Taras Kraychuk

Narito ang isa na namang napakagandang kwento ng isang dating adik ngunit ngayo'y nagsisilbi na bilang ganap na pari ng Iglesia ni Cristo, Ukranian Rite:

From drug dealer to Ukrainian Catholic monk

By Roman Gonzalez
Western Catholic Reporter
LAC STE. ANNE, ALBERTA (CCN)

After years of a life of hedonism and drug addiction, he returned to the faith and for about a dozen years now he has been serving as a hieromonk (pastor-monk) in the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

Father Taras (Terry) Kraychuk, who currently lives the monastic life in the Derwent, Alberta area, gave a partial testimony of his life at the Catholic Family Life Conference at Lac Ste. Anne July 1.

Born and raised in Winnipeg, Father Kraychuk was the child of a devout Ukrainian Catholic family that prayed together and attended Mass together. “I grew up in the faith but I drifted away from those roots,” he told about 2,000 people attending the June 29-July 2 conference. “When I was about 15 or 16 I was into the drug scene.”