Members of St. Mary Parish in Sacramento March 2 bid an emotional farewell to their pastor and a religious community charged with their pastoral care for the past 67 years.

Two days later, they welcomed a new pastor and religious order committed to making the transition a seamless one.

A farewell Mass for the Oblates of St. Joseph on the first Sunday of March marked a milestone in the parish’s history for its more than 800 households. Bishop William K. Weigand was a special guest for the Mass and Oblate Father Philip Massetti, California provincial, gave the homily.

“A lot of people keep telling me they were raised here, that we were like family for them,” said Oblate Father Arnold Ortiz, who has spent more than half of his 30 years in the priesthood serving at St. Mary Parish, most recently as pastor.

Oblates from the California province unable to be present for the Sunday Mass gathered at St. Mary to celebrate a noon Mass on March 3.

The Oblates of St. Joseph announced in mid-September their decision to no longer staff the parish due in part to a declining number of priests, but also to focus their energies on vocations recruitment and staffing their new Marello Youth Center on the grounds of Mount St. Joseph Seminary in Loomis.

At a town hall meeting in October, parishioners were invited to express their views about what they would like to see in the priest selected to be their new pastor. Donna Facino, parish secretary and a member of St. Mary Parish for 25 years, was among those who attended the meeting.

“We prayed God would send us someone who wouldn’t turn everything upside down, a good man we could get along with,” she said. “We work so well together, we hope everything will go like it’s been going.”

Opinions expressed at the meeting were used for form the criteria followed in choosing a new pastor for the parish. Included were locating a priest committed to teaching and preaching the faith, who possessed an outgoing personality, and was a member of a religious community that would care for the parish.

The priest selected to start a new chapter in St. Mary history is Father Francisco Velasquez, most recently parochial vicar of Holy Rosary Parish in Woodland.

During an interview in mid-February with The Herald, he talked about beginning his first assignment as pastor.

“The first thing I have to do is pick up where the Oblates left off,” said Father Velasquez, a member of the Verbum Dei religious community. “I want to place myself where the people are, find out how they feel about themselves, appreciate all the good things they haveÖWhatever God has been doing with them, I want to help them keep on growing.”

A native of Chicago, Father Velasquez has been on a quest to know and live out his Catholic faith in more countries than the four languages ó English, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese ó he speaks with ease.

He and his family returned to their home in Puerto Rico when he was six years old. Four years later they returned to the U.S., making their home in San Francisco where he completed his elementary and secondary education. As a teen-ager whose twin interests were sports and music, Father Velasquez admits “dropping out” of the Catholic faith for a time.

“I questioned myself, I questioned prejudice and bias against Catholics,” he said. “I couldn’t understand how if we are Christian and the Lord calls us to love one another, we could be divided. I decided I had to know my Catholic roots.”

Father Velasquez became involved at St. Anthony Parish in San Francisco in the youth Mass and music ministry, and at the Hispanic Pastoral Center in ministry to youth. His path back to the faith included witnessing the death of a close friend who had just had his own spiritual awakening, meeting a young Catholic priest on fire with his faith, and a near-fatal incident when he was a youth minister working with gang members.

“It was an awakening,” Father Velasquez said. “My thoughts were that God was calling me to a consecrated life.”

In 1980 he decided to attend a retreat in Mexico sponsored by the Verbum Dei Fathers. There he met the religious community’s founder, Verbum Dei Father James Bonet, and was introduced to a community that focused on living a life of prayer, charismatic preaching, and brotherly love. He entered the community in 1981.

The Verbum Dei Missionary Fraternity is comprised of three branches that include clergy and laymen, celibate women, and missionary married couples.

“I was drawn to the Verbum Dei Community because of the religious tradition it has ó very spiritual, very eucharistically oriented,” Father Velasquez said. “I treasure that a lot.”

Next, theological studies at the Verbum Dei Apostolic Institute took him to the Spanish island of Majorca where his religious community was founded in the 1960s. Then he went to Portugal, to Manila in the Philippines, and to Rome where he completed his master’s degree in theology at the Gregorian University in Rome. He was ordained to priesthood in 1990.

Prior to his arrival in the Sacramento Diocese, Father Velasquez was assigned to serve in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Mexico. When he came to Sacramento in 2000, he took over duties at St. Lawrence Parish for Father Joseph Ternullo, then pastor, during a sabbatical, and two years ago began the assignment at Holy Rosary Parish.

He describes his work as pastor as being “an animator of situations” where a community not only prays together but lives out the Gospel message.

“I hope to be a source for others to come in touch with God and share the word of God with their brothers and sisters,” he said.

One of the challenges he is most looking forward to is continuing the vibrant youth ministry program, including a teen Mass begun by Father Ortiz.

“I’m not a kid anymore, but I think I’m a kid at heart. I like working with youth, so I want to make the youth program grow,” said Father Velasquez, an accomplished acoustical guitarist, who looks for opportunities to combine prayer and music in his ministry.

Father Brendan O’Sullivan, pastor of St. Anthony Parish in Sacramento and chairman of the priests’ personnel board for the diocese which recommended Father Velasquez, said the match of parish and pastor should compliment both.

“Father Velasquez is very dedicated and has a wonderful pastoral sense,” he said. “He’s there for people, they depend on him and he doesn’t disappoint.”

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