MISSIONARY SERVANT PRIEST ORDAINED BY BISHOP SERRATELLI AT THE SHRINE OF ST. JOSEPH IN STIRLING, NEW JERSEY

Father Raúl Ventura, S.T. was ordained a priest on Saturday, June 13th at 11 a.m. in the presence of family and friends from the Bronx, New York, the Missionary Servant community and friends from the Shrine of St. Joseph, 1050 Long Hill Road, Stirling, New Jersey. 

One of seven children, Fr. Ventura said he first considered a vocation to the priesthood while attending college in upstate New York.  Before his 1999 graduation from St. Bonaventure University, he saw a picture in the Congregation’s Trinity Missions magazine which portrayed lay leaders, a deacon and a priest all sitting together. “This picture gave me a sense of who we are as a Community, and the importance of promoting the involvement of all.” Following his graduation, he entered the Missionary Servants and began his studies for the priesthood.

During the Mass, Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli of the Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey, ordained Fr. Ventura a priest of the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity, a religious order of 140 priests and Brothers serving the church in the United States and Latin America.  Founded in 1929 in the United States by Fr. Thomas A. Judge, C.M., the Congregation's mission is to develop a missionary spirit in the laity while preserving the faith in areas and among people who are spiritually neglected and abandoned, especially the poor.

The Missionary Servant’s General Custodian Fr. John Edmunds, S.T., and members of the General Council attended, along with Fr. Ventura’s formation director from Mexico, Fr. Odel Medina, S.T..  During the banquet that followed, Fr. Ventura received his first priestly mission assignment to Sacred Heart Parish in Camden, Mississippi. He will celebrate his First Mass on June 14^th in his home parish, Holy Spirit Church, in the Bronx, N.Y.